Search for Humanity
by Ilione
Summary: Zelgadis and Amelia have various adventures and misadventures while searching for Zel's cure. *complete*
1. Dead Ends and New Beginnings

**Search for Humanity**  
A Slayers Fanfic  


* * *

**_Disclaimer (applies to full story):_** The most important characters in this story belong to people other than me, although I think anyone who holds a character in her heart owns that character just a little bit (in a completely nonlegal sense of course). I thank the true authors for creating such enjoyable characters and such an entertaining world. I hope they won't mind me sharing the humble daydreams their stories have inspired in me. 

**_Warning:_** This story stars Zelgadis and Amelia. The other main Slayers characters appear only in cameos and fond recollections. Anyone who feels that any Slayers fanfic not starring Xellos or Lina is boring, this is not the fic for you. Everyone else, I've packed this story as full of Slayers silliness and mayhem as I could. I hope you enjoy it. 

* * *

**Chapter 1: Dead Ends and New Beginnings**

Zelgadis tugged his hood further forward over his face before knocking politely on the door. His keen ears detected grumbling and approaching footsteps before the door was opened by a grey-haired but powerfully built old man. 

"Are you Cazeno the Sorcerer?" Zelgadis asked him. 

"No, no. Old Cazeno died sixteen years back. I'm Endo the Sorcerer." 

"Perhaps you can still help me." 

"Certainly. Come in." 

The house was just as small on the inside as it had looked from the outside and it was filled with magical paraphernalia. Zelgadis noticed a divining rod and a basket full of enchanted gems as he was guided to a battered chair by the fireplace. Actually, he wouldn't mind living in a house like this when he grew old. 

As soon as he had reseated himself in his usual chair, Endo went straight to business, "Tell me, stranger: who are you and what magical help do you seek?" 

"My name is Zelgadis," the younger man replied, "and I seek information on transformation spells." 

The old sorcerer noted the way his guest kept his face and body carefully concealed under a pale-coloured cloak and loose, pale-coloured clothing, which hid everything except his eyes and a tuft of spiky, silvery-violet hair. The skin around his eyes was dark and...scaly? Endo refrained from commenting on it. Instead he remarked, "Transformation spells were more Cazeno's thing than mine. Still, I picked up a few things working with him for so long. I was his apprentice, you know, and then we worked as partners for twenty years after that." 

"I just want to consult his books." 

"His books, hmm. I'm afraid I got rid of most of them after he died -- the advanced transformation theory stuff, anyway, which I presume are the ones you want. 

Under the concealment of the cloak one of Zel's eyes twitched. "Got rid of?" he repeated. 

"Yes, I gave them away. They weren't much use to me since I was never very interested in transformations. I prefer working with inanimate objects." 

"Where. Are. The. Books. Now?" Zelgadis gritted out. 

"In the Library of Seyruun, I presume. At least that's who I gave them to." 

"Which library?" 

"The one in the palace, of course. That's a good place to look for the information you want in any case. The Seyruun palace has one of the best collections of magic texts in the world." 

"Thank you. I'll do that." 

"Oh, don't go so soon! It's been ages since I last had a chance to talk with a fellow scholar of magic." 

"Good bye." Zelgadis let himself out. 

Seyruun palace. It figured. Zelgadis had been avoiding Seyruun, and especially the palace, for the last several months, ever since he and his friends had defeated Dark Star and then gone their separate ways. 

He didn't have to go now. Cazeno's spell books would probably prove as useless as every other magical text he had consulted since the day he had fallen under this curse. Cazeno had been a mediocre sorcerer at best. Still, it was his only lead at the moment and it was irrational to avoid Seyruun without any better reason than that he didn't want to face Amelia again. 

He didn't even have any good reason to avoid Amelia. She was, after all, his friend. She had some annoying personality traits, like unshakeable cheerfulness and an obsession with justice, but those were things he had long since learned to ignore. If all he had to worry about was her personality, he would have been happy to see Amelia again. However, there were a few other problems, like that adolescent crush she had on him, and the fact that she was the heir to one of the most powerful kingdoms in the world. And her father was even more crazy than she was. Somehow the thought of visiting them made him nervous. 

Zelgadis arrived at his inn. He slipped quickly and quietly up the stairs to his room. 

Well, there was no reason why he had to see Amelia just because he was in Seyruun. He would be spending all his time in the library, so if she didn't visit the library he might not meet her. It was a faint hope. Zelgadis' appearance made him easy to spot. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to see Amelia again. He did miss her occasionally. She was a good partner in a fight, and for some incomprehensible reason she liked his chimeric appearance. 

Zel walked to the mirror and uncovered his face and hair. He stared morosely into the room's small mirror at blue stone skin, complete with inset pebbles around the eyes and chin, and wire hair. Only his eyes were still human. How hideous, he thought. He had been like this for almost three years now, and each passing day increased his frustration and despair. He replaced his face coverings and left the inn. 

His friends had never cared. That was the main reason he had traveled with them so long despite their immaturity and many eccentricities. That, and the way they tracked him down every time he tried to walk out on them. 

They had been an odd group. Their leader had been Lina Inverse: fiery haired, fiery tempered and quite possibly the most powerful sorceress alive, but as selfish and short-tempered as a child. Gourry Gabriev was the only one still travelling with her. He was an extraordinarily talented swordsman with the intellect of a child, or possibly a puppy. The last member was Amelia, the self-proclaimed Champion of Justice, barely more than a child in years and still a child in innocence. Zelgadis had been the only mature member of the group. Other companions had joined them from time to time, some more annoying than others, but the core of the group had always been Lina, Gourry, Amelia and Zelgadis. 

Zel stepped onto the dusty highway. There was no reason to stay in this town any longer. If he moved quickly he could reach Seyruun in a little over a week. 

* * *

When Zelgadis arrived in Seyruun the streets were packed with people. They were strolling about, talking, laughing, dancing, shopping and licking ice cream cones. Zel tried to fade into the shadows. It was just his luck to arrive on some Seyruunese holiday he had never heard of. 

He pulled his hood further forward over his face and asked a passing man, "Excuse me. Could you tell me the reason for these celebrations?" 

"Sure," the man replied, "It's Princess Amelia's birthday. If you go out to the main road there," he pointed, "you'll be able to see the whole royal family ride by any minute now." 

Zelgadis had never thought to wonder when Amelia's birthday was. "She's what, fourteen years old now?" 

"Sweet sixteen." The man gave Zelgadis a friendly smile and walked off. 

Sixteen, hmm? That meant that she had been fourteen when he first met her. She had acted ten. She had matured a lot during their later adventures, but Zel suspected that she would still be the same annoyingly immature girl he remembered. Zelgadis was twenty-one, not that age meant much to a chimera. No one had celebrated his last birthday, not even himself. 

Zel made his way towards the palace through the crowds along the main street, which was less tightly packed than the narrower side streets. He did not intend to watch the parade, but the crowd suddenly became impassably thick as the sound of music and cheering approached. He turned to look. 

There were dancers and musicians, followed by soldiers in crisp dress uniforms. Then came Amelia in a shining white dress, riding a shining white horse and waving to her people. The massive forms of her father and uncle framed her on each side, but Zel's eyes were glued to the petite princess. 

It felt good to see her again. He made the most of this opportunity to watch her without having to deal with her. Zelgadis always thought of Amelia in the serviceable but plain sorceress' costume she wore while travelling. He had only seen her dressed as a princess a few times before and had forgotten how well it suited her. She looked truly lovely. The royal regalia gave her an air of dignity that she tended to lack in day-to-day life. That low cut dress really showed off her figure. He had known that she had curves in all the right places but he hadn't realized just how generous those curves were. 

"Zelgadis-san!" Amelia cried in amazement and delight. 

She flung herself off her horse and pushed her way into the crowd. Zelgadis tried to melt backward into obscurity, but it was too late. Faster than he would have believed possible Amelia stood before him, bouncing with excitement. Zelgadis cringed. Hundreds of hostile and curious eyes were staring at them. 

Amelia's huge, vividly blue eyes were wide with delight. "What are you doing here? I'm so glad to see you! Are Lina-san and Gourry-san here too?" She glanced around nervously in all directions. Her hair was just as short as Zelgadis remembered it but Amelia herself had grown. She was at least as tall as Lina now and she seemed to have grown a bit in other directions too. 

"No, they're not here. I haven't seen them in several months." 

Amelia relaxed in relief. Lina and Gourry were her beloved friends, but they would undoubtedly have somehow ruined her birthday celebrations and probably destroyed a large fraction of Seyruun in the process, judging by what happened the last few times she had met up with them. 

"I'm here to use the library," Zelgadis continued. "Oh, and happy birthday." 

Even after relaxing, Amelia was still exuberantly delighted. "All the libraries of Seyruun will be devoted to your search. If the information you seek can be found, I swear by the honour of Seyruun we will find it!" She ended her speech with a finger thrust heroically at the sky. 

"Uh, thanks." 

"Come to the palace after the parade and I'll introduce you to the librarians." 

She hugged him and jumped back onto her horse. Moments later she was riding away slowly into the distance. Zelgadis blinked. 

* * *

Zel had to admit that it was easier to get into the library with royal support. After Amelia's glowing endorsement of him the librarians let him look at even the restricted books with only mild protests. Of course they still stared curiously at the freak. 

Amelia walked into sight. She had changed into a much less formal dress than the one she wore in the parade. She flashed Zelgadis a smile before going to a shelf near the back of the library and pulling out a stack of books. She dropped the books on the table in front of him. 

"I'm sorry I can't stay but I have a lot of things to do before the celebrations tonight. You will come to my feast and ball, won't you?" 

"I'll be pretty busy here." 

"Please?" She gave him a pleading look of utter cuteness. 

He felt his will start to cave in. "Maybe." 

"My birthday celebrations will be so much more fun with you here!" 

She dashed off. 

She came back. 

"By the way, you can stay in the same room you had the last time you were here. I'll have everything you need sent there." 

She dashed off again. 

What did she mean by "everything you need"? Not important. Zelgadis turned his attention to the books she had brought. 

He was surprised. The books Amelia had chosen all contained detailed information on chimeras with the relevant passages neatly bookmarked. He could easily believe that she had handed him all the descriptions of chimeras worth looking at in the entire library. Even more surprisingly, the detailed, insightful notes, which he found sandwiched between the third and fourth books, were in her handwriting. There wasn't any information in them that really helped him but she had saved him days of futile searching. 

He shouldn't be so surprised. She was a well-educated princess and a skilled sorceress. Of course she had research skills. Even so, he wondered when she had done all this work and why. 

A short time later a librarian tapped Zelgadis on the shoulder. "Excuse me, sir. We're closing the library so that everyone can go to the feast." 

"May I stay in here? I promise I won't harm any of the books." 

"I'm sorry, sir." 

Zelgadis wanted to protest but he decided that would be better not to offend the librarians. He needed their help, for now. Besides, they would probably kick him out anyway. He closed the book he was looking at and stood up. 

"You have time to change before the feast," the librarian suggested helpfully, "It's not for another half hour." 

Then why were they closing the library so early? Zelgadis acknowledged the suggestion with a grudging nod. The sun was setting outside the palace windows as he walked through the corridors to his room. 

"Everything you need" turned out to include a formal Seyruunese suit suitable for a ball. Zelgadis held it up against himself. It looked like it was even the right size. He hung it back up in the wardrobe, brushed some road dust off his cape and went to find the feast. 

* * *

Zelgadis was impatient to get back to his books but he had to admit that it was truly a feast fit for a princess. He had a gourmet side he rarely indulged or even acknowledged. The delicate flavors and rich textures of this banquet made him feel...almost happy. What made it even better was that his tablemates were at least pretending not to stare him. 

At the high table Amelia was chatting happily with various relatives and visiting dignitaries. She was wearing a ball gown now and looked, if possible, even more beautiful than she had during the parade. Prince Phil's laughter boomed out, audible even over all the other noise in the crowded room. 

Crown Prince Philionel el de Seyruun, Amelia's father, was the de facto ruler of Seyruun since the king had been on his deathbed for years. He was a massive man with a face that was more bristling black beard than face. He looked like a bandit, or possibly an ogre, and he was just as tough as he looked. Zelgadis had once seen him destroy low-level Mazoku with his bare hands. Despite this, he was a devout pacifist. Amelia's devotion to Justice was only a pale shadow of her father's. The people of Seyruun loved Prince Phil. Rulers of other countries trusted and respected him. Amelia was completely devoted to him, and he seemed infinitely proud of her. It was the most openly loving parent-child relationship Zelgadis had ever seen. Zel wasn't sure whether to be sickened or envious. 

Philionel's brother Christopher was sitting further down the table. He had just a moustache rather than a full beard, but otherwise he looked like a slightly smaller version of his elder brother. His personality was much quieter though. Zel idly wondered how Amelia had ended up so much smaller than the rest of her family. He could sympathize. He came from a tall family too. 

Finally one of the librarians left the dining hall. Zelgadis immediately got up to follow, but he had one more thing to take care of before he could return to his research. He didn't want Amelia to think he hadn't known about her birthday. He walked over to Amelia's seat and dropped her birthday present in her lap. "Here." He was halfway to the door before she had time to turn around. 

Amelia stared at his receding back in surprise and then looked down at her lap. There was a piece of paper lying there. She unfolded it and read, 'This is a time reversal spell that Rezo used as the equivalent of a healing spell for inanimate objects. It was one of Rezo's favorite spells. Maybe it will work better for you than it has for me.' Below that were the instructions for casting the spell. All the writing was in Zelgadis' precise hand. Amelia folded up the paper again and tucked it away in her dress. She would try it as soon as she had time. What an interesting present. 

* * *

Amelia woke bright and early the next day. "I'm sixteen!" she thought happily, stretching. Usually the day after a birthday was kind of a let down. After weeks of preparations and a day packed full of festivities, suddenly she would have absolutely nothing to do. Today was different. Today she had Zelgadis. 

She dressed quickly, ate a light breakfast and went straight to the library. As she had expected, he was already there. It was impossible to tell whether he had been there over night or had just arrived a few minutes ago. There were books and papers spread across the entire table, some neatly stacked, others spread open on top of each other. 

"Have you found anything yet?" Amelia asked, taking a seat on the opposite side of the table from Zelgadis with a relatively clear line-of-sight to his face. 

"No. I went through the books you gave me." He nodded to where most of them were restacked off to one side. "Now I'm looking at the works of some of the sorcerers I tried to find during my travels but couldn't." The one he was looking at right now happened to be Cazeno's. The man had been fresh in his mind. 

"How can I help?" Amelia tried to figure out which stack was the 'to read' pile. 

"You want to help?" Zelgadis looked unenthused about the idea. 

"Of course! It is only Just to help a friend." 

Zelgadis remembered the quality the research she had already done. "You can stay for now," he decided, "but promise that you will leave me alone if I ask you to." 

Amelia reluctantly agreed. 

Zel handed her another of Cazeno's books. "Skim this. It's transformation spells. There probably isn't anything useful in it, but tell me if you find anything unusual." 

Amelia didn't have much background in transformation spells so it was slow going. After an hour, by which time she felt she had grasped the essentials, she found something worth copying out. 

Zelgadis, who had glanced through and discarded five books in the time it took Amelia to page through half of one, glanced up. "Have you found something interesting?" he inquired. 

"It's a spell for breaking 'low powered and non-specifically targeted' transformations. It looks like the sorcerer who owned this book used this spell a lot." There were several stains on the page and the spine of the book was broken in that place from being held open too often and too long. 

"My transformation was very high powered and specifically targeted. How does this help me?" 

"It doesn't. I just want to learn the spell." 

Zelgadis rolled his eyes. At least she wasn't actually slowing him down. 

* * *

Lunch would have been sandwiches in the library but the librarians wouldn't let them eat over the books. Instead, Amelia dragged Zelgadis and the food to a nearby balcony with a spectacular view of the city, which was completely wasted on the moody chimera. 

"What exactly are we looking for?" Amelia asked. 

She was sitting on the parapet, sandwich in hand, heedless of the ten-story drop below. Zelgadis was leaning against the palace wall, eating as quickly as possible so he could get back to work. 

"I'm trying to learn how to unmake a chimera. As far as I can tell, no one has ever studied this before. There are no spells for it." He punched the wall in frustration, causing the plaster to crumble and several bricks to crack. "I'm studying transformation, curses, healing, chimera making techniques and anything else I can think of, trying to piece together enough theory to create a cure. I'm also looking for information on the Demon Beast Zanaffar because I think Rezo was researching it at the time he turned me into a chimera. What is really frustrating is that he was using the Clair Bible, and you know what a complete failure our quest to find the Clair Bible was." 

"We did find several copies of it." 

"All of which were destroyed before I could look at them, although of course _Lina_ got the information she needed." 

"Cheer up, Zelgadis-san," Amelia exclaimed, jumping off the parapet (on the side which did not lead to a hundred foot drop), "If we work hard and never give up, we are sure to succeed because Justice is on our side!" 

Zelgadis followed her back into the library. Their whole lunch break had lasted less than ten minutes. 

* * *

By the time they retired for the night, their stacks of discarded books were piled table-high on the floor. The librarians gave them some dirty looks. They had gone through all of the promising books on transformation and set aside the best of them for later, more detailed study. 

"Good night. See you tomorrow morning," Amelia said as they left the library. 

"Wait. I haven't decided whether I want your help or not." 

Amelia waited. She would join him tomorrow no matter what he said, but there was no point in starting the fight until after he tried to kick her out. 

Zelgadis considered. Amelia hadn't been much help since she knew nothing about transformation spells, but she hadn't slowed him down either. He had expected that with her boundless energy and enthusiasm she would spend all her time distracting him. Instead she had quietly poured all that energy into the research. In fact, her confident enthusiasm kept him from getting bored or discouraged. The work seemed to go more smoothly with someone else working with him, regardless of how much work she actually did. 

"I do want your help. See you tomorrow," Zelgadis finally said, much to Amelia's surprise. 

Amelia smiled as she climbed into bed. Her head was spinning with new information. She had never thought much about transformation spells before but they were really interesting. Today had been much quieter than yesterday yet in an odd way it had been just as much fun. 

* * *

"You know that there are other libraries in Seyruun. Would you like to look at some of them? I know one that has a lot of information on chimeras, although I don't agree with everything they say." Amelia frowned cutely. 

"Maybe we should finish with this library first," Zelgadis suggested. 

"You said that we've looked at all the likely stuff here and we just have to go through the unlikely stuff now. Why don't we look for likely stuff somewhere else instead?" 

Zelgadis considered that. It did seem like a good suggestion. How unusual! Was Amelia finally developing some sense? 

He abandoned that thought when he found out were she was trying to take him. "The Holy Order of Natural Purity?" he repeated in disbelief, "Amelia, those people kill chimeras on sight! You want me to try to walk into their head temple?" 

"If I go first and explain that you are the victim of an evil sorcerer and you are trying to return your body to its natural state, they'll be happy to help you. They only hate people who voluntarily allowed their bodies to be deformed in a misguided search for power." 

"Um." 

"Don't worry. I told them about you when I was there before. The high priest said he would like to meet you. He's very nice." 

Zelgadis really hoped Amelia knew what she was doing. 

He watched from around a corner as she stood at the door of the temple for several minutes talking to various people. Finally she beckoned him over. 

"Welcome, Zelgadis Greywords," said the high priest. 

To Zelgadis' great surprise the temple's holy texts turned out to contain a great deal of useful information, if one skipped over the rants about the evils of altering the natural human body and ignored the stomach-tuning language in which the processes of chimera creation were described. Amelia wasn't very good at ignoring. She started weeping over the books so Zelgadis made her read some inoffensive healing texts instead. They stayed in the temple until the light started to fade. 

"That was...very helpful," Zelgadis thanked the high priest, "May we come back tomorrow?" 

"Certainly!" the old man beamed. 

After that Zelgadis listened to Amelia's suggestions. 

* * *

"Zelgadis-san, I can't help you with your research this afternoon. Some ambassadors have arrived and I have to meet with them. There's a banquet tonight, but you don't have to come unless you want to. Is that okay?" 

Zelgadis' first reaction was a sense of betrayal, but he quickly suppressed it. For the last eight days Amelia had been devoting herself to his research from morning to night, but of course she had other things to do. 

"Of course," he assented, "Go do whatever you want." 

Amelia nodded happily and left. 

The work went more slowly without Amelia, but the hours still passed quickly enough. Amelia reappeared shortly after sunset, carrying a plate of food. She correctly assumed that he hadn't eaten dinner yet. 

"Some princes from a neighboring kingdom is going to visit Seyruun soon - the week after next. We're going to have a ball to welcome them," Amelia informed Zelgadis, "You're invited." 

"I don't want to spend an evening being stared at by curious and frightened aristocrats," Zel protested. 

"I'm going to make it into a masquerade. That way no one will know that you're a chimera." 

That was hard to argue against. "I'll probably be too busy with my research." 

"You can take one evening off, can't you? You don't have any time limit on using the libraries." 

"I want to start searching for my cure as soon as possible." It was a weak argument so Zelgadis changed the subject, "Do you always have so many balls? You had one just a week ago." 

"Yes," Amelia sighed, "There have been a lot of them lately. It's because I'm of marriageable age. They're a way for me to meet people." 

"Doesn't it annoy you to have people shoved at you like that?" 

"No, not really. There's no pressure for me to choose anyone, at least not yet, and dancing is fun!" 

Zelgadis smiled at her innocent enthusiasm. "Have you found anyone you like yet?" 

"No, not really," Amelia replied, blushing. Not as much as I like you, she added silently. She really had tried to get over her crush on Zelgadis, but it was hard when no other man she had ever met (with the exception of her father) interested her half as much as he did. Few had his intelligence. Fewer had his intense personality. None had his style. She would rather wade through mud with Zelgadis than dance with anyone else. Of course she would rather dance with him than do either, thus the invitation to the ball. 

"I'm finished eating. Let's get back to work," Zelgadis interrupted her thoughts. He wondered who she had been thinking about with that dreamy expression on her face. 

* * *

As the days passed, Amelia spent less and less time with Zelgadis and more and more preparing for the princes' visit. However, she always managed to spend at least an hour or two with her friend. Two mornings before the princes were scheduled to arrive, she walked into the library only to discover that there were no books piled around Zelgadis' table. The only things on the table were dozens of pages of notes and Zel's elbows. 

"What are you doing?" she asked curiously. 

"I'm condensing my notes into categories of potential techniques for reversing the chimera creation process," Zelgadis answered distractedly. "Most chimeras are grown in nutrient tanks or sewn together using a combination of magic and surgical techniques. A few are created by transformation spells as I probably was. The transformation method is less messy but requires more magical skill." 

"Yes, I know," Amelia reminded him. "Can I help?" 

"Not with this." Zelgadis considered telling her that he didn't need her at all, but that would be a waste of a good research assistant. "I've heard rumors that there is a magical spring somewhere in this region. Try to find out more about it." 

"Okay!" 

Amelia knew exactly where to find information on hot springs. It was a place she never went without a good reason, but this reason was good enough. She searched through her bedroom closet until she found what she was looking for: a small white box containing a key. She went down the hall to the door next to hers and unlocked it. 

For the first time in over a year, she stepped into her sister's room. It was rather dusty but otherwise just how she remembered it. There was a white canopy bed with carved snakes twining around the bedposts. There was a half-open closet containing frilly dresses and tall boots. There were paintings of knights and dragons battling on the walls. There was a makeup table. On the makeup table, behind the brushes and cosmetics, there was a row of books pinned between unicorn-shaped bookends. One of those books was a comprehensive guide to hot springs. Amelia pulled it out and absent-mindedly sat down in the dust beside the bed to page through it. 

* * *

**_Author's Note:_**The first two chapters are rather slow. Things pick up once they hit the road so, if you liked this chapter at all, keep reading! 

I imagine that if you've had any significant exposure to anime and its fanfiction, you've probably already picked up a few Japanese terms but here's an explanation of all the Japanese I use just in case. These are all appended onto the ends of names in order to be more or less formal. 

**-san** -- basic polite honorific like Mr. or Miss  
_ex._ Zelgadis-san = Mr. Zelgadis   
_used by:_ Amelia and Xellos for everybody, Slyphiel and other polite characters for most people (Lina, Gourry and Zelgadis practically never use it, which makes them unusual) 

**-chan** -- affectionate diminutive  
_ex._ Zel-chan = Zelly   
_used by:_ pretty much nobody in Slayers (although it's used a LOT in Slayers fanfiction for some reason). People in other series (and real life) use it for girls, small children of both genders, and sometimes close friends and family 

**-sama** -- honorific indicating great respect and/or love.   
_ex._ Zelgadis-sama = ...uh, complicated; see next section   
_used by:_Eris (Lord Rezo), Slyphiel (Gourry, dear), Martina (Master Xellos), most people (Lord Christopher). Note that it can indicate love, as in the first three, or be a formal title without emotional implications, as in the last. 

I don't think I use this one, but it's good to know anyway.  
**-kun** -- less cutesy diminutive than -chan  
_ex._ Zel-kun = Zel, buddy  
_used by:_ not many people in Slayers. I think Dilgear may use it when he's trying to annoy Zelgadis. In other series (and real life) it's used for boys the way -chan is used for girls. 

And that is all the Japanese you need to know to read this story. 


	2. Dancing and Departure

**Chapter 2: Dancing and Departure**

"Zelgadis-san, this ball is going to be so much fun! Wait until you see your costume!" 

Amelia was supposedly taking notes on all the magical springs in her sister's hot spring book, but in fact was fidgeting with excitement. The ball was less than a day away. 

"I may not go. If I don't stop for distractions like that I may be able to finish my research tomorrow." 

Amelia looked utterly stricken. "But...you have to go. I planned it all for you." 

"For the princes of Wileyah, you mean." 

"Zelgadis-san, you must go to the ball! Promise me that you will!" 

"Give me one good reason why I should go to this ball. I hate parties." 

Amelia thought hard. It had to be a rational reason. Emotional pleas like, "I'll be heart-broken if you don't go," would not impress him. 

"You still can't think of any?" Zelgadis asked rather sarcastically after a minute. 

"I've thought of lots," Amelia retorted. "Prince Seras wants to meet you. You could promote good relations between kingdoms by coming." 

"Not good enough." 

"The royal tailors went to a lot of effort to make your costume. You don't want their hard work to go to waste, do you?" 

"Not good enough." 

Amelia sighed. She had hoped to appeal to his sense of justice, but she would use whatever means necessary. "There will be a fantastic buffet." 

"I'm not Lina. You can't bribe me with food." 

Amelia pulled out a list. "We're having: goose liver pate, layered fish terrine, caviar, smoked salmon..." 

Zelgadis' mouth began to water. 

"...assorted meat rolls, prosciutto-stuffed mushrooms, crab-stuffed snow pea pods, marinated shrimp, dill and garlic olives, quiche lorraine, tarts, cheese (provolone, cheddar, limburger, edam, muenster, and some other kinds), crackers, spiced meat balls, tapenade, assorted vegetables and vegetable dips, fruit cocktails..." 

"Alright, I'll go! But only long enough to eat." 

Amelia smiled smugly. She knew him alright. "Good. I'll see you there then." 

* * *

"Zelgadis-san, it's almost time for the party! You have to get dressed!" 

Zelgadis reluctantly looked up from his notes to the princess. She was already dressed in what he assumed was her costume. It was a light blue dress with shapeless pieces of fluffy white material pinned on to it in random places. She was nearly dancing with excitement. 

"Can I just finish this first?" he asked. 

"No. You have to get ready _now_. Come on!" 

She practically dragged him to her room and shoved him in the door. "Your costume is laid out on the bed." 

Zelgadis saw that she was correct. The bed, he couldn't help noticing, was covered with pink and white ruffles. In fact, the whole room was covered with pink and white ruffles. The pictures on the walls showed knights slaying monsters, ruffians or each other. There were battered stuffed animals watching him from the shelves. Zelgadis tried not to look at anything too closely. It was embarrassing enough being alone in Amelia's room without being nosy. 

The costume was one of the puffy outfits the Seyrunnese nobility favored, complete with cummerbund, cape and ankle boots. Unlike any other such outfit he had seen, this one was all black. The only things that relieved the darkness were the little silver stars stitched all over it. Each star was held on by one or two loops of thread. It would take someone with a pair of scissors only a few minutes to convert the costume into an outfit suitable for everyday use. 

Zelgadis fingered the sleeve of the costume unhappily. He had no desire at all to attend this ball. Maybe he could go back and finish the rough draft of that transformation-based chimera unmaking spell he had been working on. No one would notice if he was a little late to the ball, right? He would definitely go eventually. He had to keep his promise to Amelia. 

"How is your research going?" Amelia asked conversationally from the far side of the door. Zelgadis froze with his hand on the doorknob. 

"It's going well," he replied. Realizing that he was not going to escape, he began peeling off his dust-colored clothing. "I'm currently writing a series of chimera unmaking spells based on the information I've gathered. I doubt any of them are strong enough to alter my transformation, but perhaps they will eventually be useful in some way." 

"Then you're almost finished?" Amelia asked neutrally. 

He had tried to finish his research quickly so that he could leave before the ball, but he had found some very promising material in the last week. He did not regret taking the time to read through it, but it did mean that he had to go to this ball. "Yes, I should only need two or three more days." 

"And then you'll leave again." There was no doubt about it this time; Amelia sounded sad. 

"Of course." 

Zelgadis found a pair of black silk gloves under the cape and put them on. There was also an oddly-shaped piece of black fabric, but he couldn't figure out what it was. 

"Amelia, what am I supposed to do with this thing?" 

"May I come in?" 

Zel opened the door. "Zelgadis-san, you look so handsome!" Amelia exclaimed as soon as she saw him. She darted into the room and immediately began straightening his costume. She yanked on the shoulders, retied the sash, and adjusted the hang of the cape, all within a minute of stepping in the door. 

"This thing?" he reminded her, holding up the unidentified garment. 

"That's your hood. Sit down." She shoved him into a chair so that she could reach the top of his head. Then she yanked the hood out of his hand and skillfully fastened it over his hair. "Stay there. I'll get your mask." 

She darted out of the room again. 

Zelgadis was left alone. It was too late to run back to his notes so instead he wandered curiously over to the mirror. He winced as always at the sight of his hideous face, but the rest of him looked surprisingly good. He looked like a nobleman. 

Zel's parents owned millions of gold in the form of magical supplies and ancient relics, but they insisted on living like ordinary townsfolk. Zelgadis had bought all his equipment with money earned by his own labor. It had taken him three years as a woodcutter's apprentice to save up enough money to buy his sword. No one looking at him now would guess his common origins. 

Amelia skipped back into the room with two masks clutched in one hand and a small ceramic pot in the other. "Sit down," she ordered imperiously. 

Zelgadis sat down in his chair again. Amelia set the masks and pot on the dressing table and pulled up another chair so that she could sit opposite him. 

"Now hold still." She pulled a brush out of the pot and began painting his forehead with it. 

Zelgadis jerked away. "What are you doing?" 

"I'm putting glue on your face so the mask will stay on." 

"Is that necessary? I thought people usually just tie masks on with strings. 

"These are special masks that need to be glued on. You don't want it to fall off do you?" 

"No." 

"Then hold still. Don't worry, the glue comes off easily," she added as she began dabbing his face again. 

Zelgadis sighed and submitted. He couldn't feel the brush but he could feel the wet trails it left as cool patches on his skin. Passive and strangely mesmerized, he watched Amelia's frown of concentration. He felt relieved but at the same time almost sorry when she put down the brush and picked up the mask. She pressed the mask into place and smoothed it down with gentle fingers. She took an especially long time adjusting the complicated folds around the mouth. 

Finally she stood back. "Take a look." 

Zelgadis stepped over to the mirror again. His face had become the face of the full moon. It was an amazingly well-crafted mask. It also hid his stone skin completely, except for his lips and eyelids. 

"My mouth and eyes still show," he complained, noting as he did so that the mask moved with his jaw. 

"That's what this is for." Amelia held up a small jar of silver paint. Almost before he realized what she was doing, she was running a paint-coated thumb over his eyelids and lips. Zelgadis blushed under his mask. Amelia turned away to wash her hands. 

"Now you have to do the same thing for me," she said. 

Zelgadis pulled off his gloves and imitated what she'd done to him as best he could. Soon her face was covered by the golden disk of the sun. 

Amelia quickly inspected his handiwork in the mirror. Zelgadis walked up behind her and looked at their reflections side-by-side. She had chosen their costumes well. He really was as different from her as night from day. 

"I love these costumes!" Amelia exclaimed. "Isn't this exciting?" She smiled up at him. "I still have to decorate my hair but you can go ahead to the party. The buffet table should be up by now." 

After a few more backward glances at his unfamiliar reflection, Zelgadis followed her advice. 

When Zel arrived at the party there were already plenty of people dancing or standing around chatting, but it was obvious that most of the guests had not arrived yet. Zelgadis walked straight to the buffet table. As he picked through the delicacies there, he surveyed the guests more carefully. Some of the costumes were lovely. He was most impressed by a peacock and a fire spirit. Other costumes looked like they had been carelessly thrown together at the last minute. Many were just ordinary ball gowns and suits with the addition of a half-mask. Zelgadis had never before attended a party nearly as fancy as this one but he refused to let it overawe him. He had attended parties before, on rare occasions. The people there might not have worn silk and jewels but the principle was the same. 

"Cedric!" An oversized man in a brown suit and bear mask descended on Zelgadis. 

Zelgadis stared at him in surprise. "You must have mistaken me for someone else," he said coldly. 

"Nonsense! Did you think I wouldn't recognize my own nephew? I see you're hanging around the buffet table as usual. Look at all the pretty girls here. You should be dancing, my boy." 

"I am not your nephew." 

"Don't play silly games with me, Cedric." 

A fanfare saved Zelgadis from having to answer such stupidity. Like everyone else in the room, he turned to look at the grand staircase. Two figures stood there. One was a massive man wearing a dark blue body suit with an X on the chest, a long cape and a bandit-style mask. The smaller figure with her hand resting on his arm was a girl dressed in the summer sky. She had tied gold ribbons in her hair and put on jewelry since the last time Zel had seen her. 

"Good evening, everyone," Prince Phil boomed amiably. "I hope you're enjoying the party." 

"Welcome, everyone!" Amelia added. 

They walked down the staircase together to the accompaniment of applause. 

"As I was saying, Cedric," the old bear began. 

"Excuse me," Zelgadis broke away. He wove his way through the crowd. 

"Zelgadis-san!" Amelia called, spotting him. 

Zelgadis walked over to her and bowed slightly. Somewhat startled, Amelia curtseyed. 

"Are you enjoying the party, Zelgadis-san?" 

He thought about that. "Yes," he decided. 

"Would you like to dance?" she asked hopefully. 

"I don't dance." 

"_Zelgadis-san_, the purpose of a ball is dancing. You can't come to a ball and not dance!" Amelia proclaimed, striking poses. 

Zelgadis hid a smile behind his mask. Even though her face was completely hidden, there was no doubt that this was Amelia. 

"I just came for the food. You know that." 

Amelia sighed. "Yes, I know. I hoped you'd changed your mind." 

Zelgadis was enjoying the party more than he'd expected. The dancing and costumes were beautiful to watch and it was wonderful to be surrounded by people without worrying about his freakish appearance frightening them. However, he didn't say so. Amelia sighed again and went to dance with someone else. 

A crowd of curious people drifted over to investigate the mysterious stranger whose costume matched the princess'. Zelgadis watched Amelia dance as he idly chatted with them. He was not surprised that she knew all the steps but he was surprised by how gracefully she moved. She was usually so awkward. At first he was delighted to be able to talk to people who had no idea that he was a chimera but soon their questions became annoying. With some effort, he escaped them and returned to the buffet table. 

As Zelgadis was gathering up a plateful of appetizers to take with him when he left, one more richly dressed pest caught him, a young man in a small gold mask. 

"You're a friend of the princess?" the young man said as a conversation opener. 

Zelgadis nodded briefly. 

"She's a sweet girl," the young man continued idly, "I hope she survives." 

Zelgadis stared at him suspiciously. "What do you mean?" 

"Oh, nothing much, just that Seyruun has such cutthroat politics. They lose several members of every generation to assassination, you know. Don't glare at me like that. I said I hope she survives and I meant it. I have no interest in the throne of Seyruun since I'm only two warm bodies away from the throne of Wileyah." 

"You are Crown Prince Seras," Zel recognized. 

"Quite, and you are?" 

"Zelgadis." 

"What an interesting name." 

"Quite." 

"So, Zelgadis, do you think that little Amelia will ever be queen?" 

Zelgadis stared at him for a long moment before answering, "Who would want to kill her? Her father and her uncle Christopher wouldn't, and all the other members of the Seyruun royal family are dead." 

"Not all. For instance, I'm quite alive." 

"You are a member of the _Seyruun_ royal family?" 

"My mother is Philionel and Christopher's sister. As I said, I have no interest in Seyruun, but I have two younger brothers who might. They're over there." He pointed out two foppish young men chatting with a group of ladies in another part of the room. "I might even encourage them to look to Seyruun. It would keep them from trying to assassinate me." He laughed as if he had just made a joke. 

Zelgadis glared at the prince with dislike. "It would be a good way to get rid of them if that's your goal. The last few people who tried to assassinate Prince Philionel died." 

"But Amelia is an easier target, no?" 

"Don't count on it." 

"She's just a girl." 

"She's a powerful sorceress." 

Seras dismissed that argument with a wave of his hand. "She's completely naive. She thinks purity of heart will make her invulnerable." He laughed at the very idea. 

"Her father has the same delusion and he's managed to survive so far." 

"Uncle Phil survives despite his foolish ideas about justice because he is powerful enough to crush anything that gets in his way. I've even heard rumors that he can kill Mazoku with his bare hands! False, of course, but they show how much people respect his strength." Seras sounded amused. "That is also why he is such a successful ruler. People respect power." 

Zelgadis considered that. It sounded like something he would have said before he became a chimera. It still made a lot of sense to him but, "You don't think his popularity is a result of his personality? I would have said that the people of Seyruun love him because he is benevolent, loud and overly dramatic." 

"What makes you think that?" the prince asked patronizingly. 

Zelgadis bristled, "I can tell the difference between people cheering out of fear and people cheering out of love. When Prince Philionel rides through the city the people of Seyruun cheer out of love." 

Prince Seras shrugged in a way that said, 'Think whatever you want; it's not worth my time to argue about it.' 

"If Uncle Phil ever died, do you think the people would support Amelia for his sake?" 

Zelgadis gave him a measuring look. "Yes." 

"That wouldn't last very long. People only love someone for someone else's sake as long as they don't know her. If she ever became the ruler she would have to win their respect for herself." 

"This may surprise you, but they already love her for her own sake." 

"Really?" 

"She is just as loud, justice obsessed and overly dramatic as her father, and she loves them." 

"Do you think..." 

"Excuse me, my lord," Zelgadis interrupted, walking away. 

He was going to keep a closer watch on Amelia for the rest of the ball. He didn't really think that anyone would try to assassinate her tonight, but that Wileyan prince made his flesh creep, and he didn't even have any flesh. 

* * *

Amelia was on her way to join Zelgadis in the library when she saw him walking down a hall that intersected hers. She could tell by his stride that he had finished his research and was on his way out of Seyruun. She turned and ran back to her room. 

As soon as she got there, she started pawing through her wardrobe and throwing garments at the bed. First, a white tunic with pink trim; then white pants, a white cloak with purple lining, a bracelet attached to a magic amplifying gemstone, a matching collar, a thick belt; and finally a pair of battered, light green boots. She spent a minute searching for the second bracelet among the assorted junk on the top shelf of her wardrobe but she couldn't find it and she couldn't waste any more time looking for it. She did find her pink, fuzzy purse, however, and it even still had some money in it. 

Quickly, she stripped off her dress and pulled on the sorceress costume. The tunic was significantly tighter than she remembered, but fortunately it had been very loose to start with. The pants ended above her ankles, but the boots covered that. The boots were a bit tight, but the well-worn leather would stretch. The cape, bracelet and belt still fit. She looked herself over quickly in the mirror. Overall, the outfit was tighter and more ragged than she would like it to be, but it would do. She shoved her family crest, another handful of money, a toothbrush and a few other useful little things into her purse and dashed out the door. 

She almost tripped over a scrap of paper on the way out. It was a note from Zelgadis. "I've finished my research. Thank you for your help. Goodbye. Zelgadis," Amelia read. She scowled. 

Then she dashed back into her room and grabbed a pen. She crossed out Zelgadis' message and wrote on the other side, "Daddy, I'm going to help Zelgadis-san find his cure. I love you." She quickly signed her name and dashed out of the room again. 

Fortunately, there was a servant carrying linens just one hallway over. Amelia handed her the note. "Give this to my Daddy," she said. 

Then she ran for the palace doors, taking every shortcut she knew. She caught up with Zelgadis just before he reached the front doors. 

"Wait, Zelgadis-san, I'm coming with you!" she cried. 

He stiffened. He reluctantly turned around. He tried to be reasonable. 

"Doesn't you father need you here at the palace? Doesn't Seyruun need you?" 

"No, all I do is ride in parades and host parties. Someone else can do that. They haven't trusted me on my own with important duties, like diplomatic missions, since that incident in Xoana. I've barely been out of Seyruun since we returned from the New World. It's so unfair! It isn't my fault that the fleet was destroyed." 

Zelgadis winced at the memories of massive, senseless destruction her words called up. He had almost forgotten Lina's habit of accidentally destroying cities while trying to save them from monsters. 

"Helping you find your cure is the most valuable thing I could be doing right now," Amelia concluded. 

Zelgadis looked into her huge, pleading eyes. Amelia was the most stubborn person he knew. He foresaw three ways this could turn out. One, he could give in. Then he would be stuck with her until she finally decided to go home again. Two, he could refuse. Then she would probably follow him. He would be stuck with her anyway and, to make matters worse, she would be mad at him. Three, by some miracle he might be able to convince her to stay here. Then he would be haunted by the memory of her disappointment for weeks, and if one of her slimy Wileyan cousins hurt her after he left he would never forgive himself. 

Zelgadis gave in. "Alright, you can come with me." 

"Yay!" Amelia struck a triumphant, heroic pose. "I will not fail you, Zelgadis-san!" 

They walked out into the city. 

"If you're going to be travelling with me, you'll need this, won't you?" Zelgadis pulled a pink bracelet set with a blue gemstone out of a concealed pocket in his cloak and thrust it at her. 

"So that's where that went!" Amelia exclaimed happily, fastening it around her bare wrist. 

"You _forgot_ you gave it to me?" 

"Um, sorry. Thank you for taking such good care of it." 

"Never mind. Let's go." 

* * *

**_Author's Note:_** ...And they're off! 

When the idea for Zelgadis and Amelia's costumes came to me, I had to fit a masquerade ball into the story somehow. It was pure self-indulgence, but I tried to make up for it by not making the ball the catalyst for shameless romance that most masquerade balls are. Instead, you get Prince Seras. I find I rather like him, despicable though he may be. Perhaps I will find some way to use him again someday. Hmm... 


	3. Bandits and Bedmates

**Chapter 3: Bandits and Bedmates**

Amelia dragged her feet. "I'm tired," she moaned. It was past sunset, and supper had consisted of a meat roll bought from a food vendor's cart several hours ago. Besides, it had been months since she had last spent an entire day walking. 

"We would be there already if you hadn't stopped to rescue that kitten stuck in a tree," Zelgadis snapped. 

"But the little girl was so upset! It would have been cruel not to help. Besides, it didn't take _that_ long." 

"It wouldn't have if they didn't spend the next hour thanking you." 

"It was a picnic. Lina-san always said, 'Never turn down a free lunch.'" 

"And what about the farmers whose border dispute you had to settle, or that little boy with the scraped knee?" 

"I'm a princess of Seyruun. I have a duty to my people." 

"I'm just saying that this trip would go a lot faster if you didn't stop to help every single person along the way." 

"Look! Isn't that the town ahead?" Amelia pointed, glad to change the subject. 

It wasn't the town they were originally aiming for but it did have an inn. 

"Two rooms," Zelgadis requested of the innkeeper. When on his own he usually just slept on the ground near the road, but he knew from experience that Amelia preferred inns. 

The innkeeper gave his cloaked guest an appraising look. "Alright, sir," he said, "You take the first room at the top of the stairs. Another gentleman is already in there but the bed is big enough for two. The lady can have the other room." 

Zel had some misgivings about sharing a bed with a stranger but this was the only inn in town and he certainly couldn't sleep with Amelia. 

Amelia was already halfway up the stairs. Zelgadis followed her up and let himself into his room. His bedmate was already fast asleep. Zelgadis removed his cloak and boots and gingerly crawled into bed. Despite the unaccustomed presence of a warm body next to his, he was soon asleep. 

Brinkley woke up starving. He'd arrived at the inn before suppertime and fallen asleep immediately. Why had he been so tired? Because this morning the caravan he had been travelling with had been attacked by bandits and he had been fleeing them ever since, having barely escaped with both his money and his life. 

Now that he was finally starting to feel safe, his stomach reminded him that he hadn't eaten since yesterday. It was too late for supper and much too early for breakfast, but maybe there would be something in the kitchen he could snack on. He lit the candle beside his bed on the second try. Curiously, he noticed that another man had taken the other half of the bed while he was asleep. Brinkley held the candle out over the bed to illuminate his bedmate's face. 

"MONSTER!" 

Brinkley didn't stop running until he was in Seyruun City. 

Zelgadis awoke, the word 'monster' still echoing in his ears, to find that his bed was on fire. He quickly put out the flames with a Freeze Arrow. Now the bed was cold and wet as well as charred, and that idiot would probably be back any minute with reinforcements. 

Amelia rushed into the room shouting "Halt, monster!" She was barefoot and her hair was rumpled from sleep but her eyes were blazing with righteousness. Then she took in the scene. "Where's the monster?" she asked plaintively. 

"That would be me," Zelgadis said. He picked up his cloak and boots and stormed down to the stables. 

The stable was actually more comfortable than his bedroom. At least horses wouldn't run screaming at the sight of him. The hay was soft and, if it was prickly, he didn't notice it though his stone skin. Zelgadis went back to sleep. 

Burt the stable boy entered the stable at the crack of dawn to check on his charges, as he did every morning. All the horses seemed happy and healthy today. It should be a peaceful morning. Then he came to the open stall at the far end of the barn. 

"Ma...ma...ma...Monster!" he screamed and ran to grab the pitchfork. 

Zelgadis awoke to find three sharp metal prongs pointed at his face. His eyes traveled up the handle of the pitchfork to the trembling boy at the other end. He growled and got to his feet. Not again! 

"D-don't move!" The boy thrust the pitchfork threateningly at Zelgadis. 

"Get out of my way," Zel growled, "I have had a _really_ bad night." 

He shoved the pitchfork and boy out of his way and stamped out of the stable. The boy ran after him shouting, "Wait! Stop, monster!" 

Amelia and Zelgadis reached the common room at the same time, she from upstairs, he from the stable. They stared at each other for a long moment. 

"The monster..." she began. 

"...is me again," he finished. 

She dispelled her fireball. 

"Let's get out of here," he said. 

They shoved the payment under the innkeeper's door and left. Zelgadis was tempted not to pay for such a miserable night. Amelia insisted. 

* * *

The sun rose but it couldn't penetrate the darkness of Zelgadis' mood. Amelia cast nervous glances at him from time to time but didn't dare say anything. 

Suddenly she placed a hand on his arm. He stopped walking and gave her a puzzled glance. Her gaze was serious as her hand moved slowly toward his face. Zelgadis stared back at her, startled. There was a faint _twang_. 

"You have hay in your hair," she told him, holding up the offending straw. 

* * *

Amelia yawned. Zelgadis yawned. They kept walking. A minute later Zelgadis yawned, causing Amelia to yawn again. 

"Please, can we stop and rest for just a little while? It's so hot!" Amelia begged for the third time. 

Zelgadis was about to say no again, but he was tired and hot too. What would it hurt if they sat down for just a few minutes? They were already irreparably behind schedule. "Oh, alright," he grumbled. 

"Thank you!" Amelia exclaimed in relief. 

She ran off ahead. Zelgadis found her in a pasture just down the road under a shady tree. He eased himself down beside her with a faint groan. 

For a while they just sat letting the peace sink into them and the tension drain out. 

"Do you see that cloud?" Amelia pointed. 

"Mm-hmm" 

"Doesn't it look just like a butterfly?" 

Zel considered that. "No, it looks more like a sleeping dragon to me. See, there's its leg, and there's its head curled up against its body. 

"Hmm," Amelia agreed, "What about that one?" She pointed to another cloud. "What does that one look like to you?" 

They were curled up next to each other fast asleep when the bandits found them. 

* * *

Zelgadis woke up groggy. Sleep spell, he identified instantly. He cautiously cracked his eyes open and looked around as well as he could without revealing that he was awake. His caution was unnecessary. The only other person in the room was Amelia and she was still asleep. 

He sat up. He was in a cage that, judging by the thickness of the bars and the powerful anti-magic charms on it, was designed to hold a dragon. Zelgadis smiled sardonically. So they put the monster in a cage. His captors hadn't bothered to restrain him in any other way though, and they had taken nothing except his sword and money pouch. Good. He pulled a complete set of lock picks out of his pocket and got to work. 

For such a fortified cage, it had a very simple lock. Picking it took him only a few minutes. 

Zelgadis stepped over Amelia's prone body and looked out the grill in the door. There were no guards in sight. How lax. The lock on the door succumbed to his lock picks even more quickly than the cage's lock had. Soon Zelgadis was slipping through the shadows, scouting out the bandit camp. 

Many of the hallways were occupied, but he easily put the bandits to sleep with whispered spells. It seemed like fair turnaround. He finally found a door that was guarded, although the guards lounging against the wall were almost asleep even before he cast his spell on them. This should be the treasure room. Bandits were so predictable. 

* * *

The bandit leader did not look up from his paperwork at the sound of his door opening. They never told you that being a bandit leader involved paperwork. No one had ever warned him about it. He hated paperwork. It always put him in a bad mood for days. That's why he let it pile up until he couldn't avoid it any more. Unfortunately, this was one of his monthly days of torment. 

"I'll give you anything you ask for if you'll do this paperwork for me," he half-joked. 

Zelgadis had been standing open-mouthed in surprise, but now he quickly pulled his composure together. "I accept. I want you to free me and the girl you found with me." 

The bandit leader looked up. That creepy-looking thing his men had brought in this morning was looming over his desk. "Monster!" he shrieked, "Monster! Monster! Monster!" 

Zelgadis moved a few steps closer to the cowering bandit in order to loom more impressively. "Do we have a deal?" 

"Yes," the bandit leader decided, backing away from his desk and the approaching monster. 

* * *

Amelia woke up slowly. Why had someone put a sleep spell on her? She had already been sleeping naturally. And why was she lying on stone? The only stone that had been near her when she fell asleep was Zelgadis, and this certainly wasn't him. She tried to rub her eyes but found that her hands were tied. Oh, she had been captured. She sat up. She was in a small, stone-walled room which contained nothing except her, a large empty cage and some rusty manacles over by the wall. 

After a lot of wriggling and a small unbinding spell she managed to get her hands free. She quickly untied her feet and went to look out the grill in the door. To her surprise, the door opened at her touch. What sort of captors would tie her up but leave the door unlocked? 

There was no one in the hallway. 

"Zelgadis-san?" Amelia called hopefully. No answer, or rather no answer from Zelgadis. The bandits came running as soon as they realized that she was out of her cell. 

Amelia smiled smugly. She had hoped to find her friend, but her real goal had been to get her captors in one place where she could deal with them all at once. 

"Halt, evil-doers," she shouted confidently, "You have kidnapped innocent travelers and now you will have to face the consequences!" 

The bandits glanced at each other, each waiting for someone else to make the first move. She was just an unarmed girl, but she was so confident. Surely she must have some secret weapon. They said that Lina the Bandit Killer looked like a small, scrawny girl. This girl didn't fit the rest of the description, but you never knew. 

That lasted until the bandits saw that Amelia wasn't using anything worse than verbal attacks. Then they mobbed her. They had her tied up again in seconds. 

"How dare you!" Amelia gasped. She launched into an even more passionate justice speech. 

* * *

"That's the last of it," Zelgadis said. "Your accountant can't even do basic addition and subtraction." 

"Hey, I did that accounting!" the bandit leader protested. 

Zelgadis shrugged unapologetically. "I've fulfilled my part of the deal. Now return our belongings and set us free." 

He swept out of the room, cape flapping behind him and the bandit scuttling at his heels. 

"Uh, the treasure room is in there." The bandit leader pointed to the room they had just left. 

"Oh." Zelgadis waited while the bandit retrieved the prisoners' weapons and money pouches. 

* * *

"Tell us more," the one of the bandits mocked. "Tell us how you're gonna punish us with the power of justice." 

"Yeah, and repeat that part about the poor innocent merchants. I liked that part," another sniggered, appreciatively watching Amelia's chest bounce in rage. 

* * *

Zelgadis followed the sounds of Amelia's ranting and the bandits' jeers back toward his cell. He found most of the bandits in the camp, including several that he had earlier put to sleep, clustered around the noisy heroine of justice. 

"... and in the name of Justice I, Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun, will punish you!" Amelia concluded as Zelgadis shoved his way through the crowd with the bandit leader in tow. 

"Amelia, this is the leader of the bandits. He's agreed to let us go." Zelgadis said. 

Amelia's eyes narrowed. "You made a deal with a bandit? Zelgadis-san, an ally of justice never makes deals with villains! An ally of justice crushes evil-doers without mercy!" 

"You didn't tell me she was the _princess_," the bandit leader broke in. Monster or no monster, he was sticking to his principles. "If you want to ransom a princess, you have to pay a princess' ransom." 

Zelgadis held up a large, flawless ruby. "Will this be enough?" 

The bandit gaped. "That wasn't in your money pouch!" 

"No." 

The bandit leader quickly recovered from his surprise. "What's to stop me from keeping both the ruby and you?" He instantly regretted the question. 

The monster turned slowly and looked him in the eye. "I am offering you ransom because it's less trouble than blowing up your camp and killing all your men. Marginally. Would you prefer that I change my mind?" 

The bandit leader stared back. The threat might be empty but somehow he didn't feel like risking it. "Uh...I'll take that ransom." 

"Good." 

Amelia finished the incantation she had been muttering under her breath. "Fireball!" 

The ball of flame floated up from between her bound hands, arched over her head and flew straight at the bandit leader's face. Zelgadis barely got a shield spell up in time. 

"Amelia, what do you think you're doing? If that had exploded, it might have brought down the roof on our heads! Besides, he's already agreed to let us go." 

Amelia pointed an accusing shoulder at her partner. "Zelgadis-san, I am disappointed in you! This is not the way to treat evildoers! Listen to the voice of Justice in your heart..." 

At this moment, the bandit's mage finally appeared on the scene. He had been so caught up in his reading that he hadn't noticed the commotion until now. He shoved his thick glasses up his nose and cast a sleep spell at Amelia. 

Zelgadis deflected it and turned to face the newcomer. 

"As an Ally of Justice, you should annihilate them with the irresistible might of your righteous fury!" 

The sorcerer panicked and threw a flare arrow at the chimera. Zelgadis canceled it out with a precisely calculated freeze arrow. 

The bandit leader gulped. Both his prisoners were magic-users? Why hadn't anyone warned him? The other bandits started surreptitiously slipping away to anywhere that was as far away from this mage fight as possible. 

Amelia pointed her shoulder straight at Zelgadis and shouted, "An Ally of Justice does not resort to bribes!" 

"Freeze Arrow!" cast the skinny, myopic, young mage. 

"Flare Arrow," Zelgadis instantly countered. "Let's get out of here, Amelia!" 

"As long as he has justice on his side nothing can stand in his way!" 

"Flare Arrow!" 

"Freeze Arrow. Amelia..." 

"He can destroy all obstacles because of the righteous anger in his heart!" 

"Freeze Arrow!" 

"Flare Arrow. Amelia, are you listening to me?" 

Amelia gazed passionately upward at her vision of a true ally of justice. "An ally of justice is unable to endure the sight of wrong doing." 

"Flare Arrow!" 

"Freeze Arrow. _Amelia..._" The air chilled noticeably. Zelgadis' temper was adding power to his spells. 

"He crushes injustice wherever he finds it just because it is injustice!" 

"Freeze Arrow!" 

"Flare Arrow! I..." The flames from Zelgadis' flare arrow brushed the bandit-mage's face before dissipating harmlessly. The young mage started to seriously panic. "...am not..." 

"He doesn't wait until the villain harms him..." 

"Flare Arrow!" 

"Freeze Arrow! ...an Ally of Justice! " A thin layer of frost formed on the ceiling 

"...because he feels the pain of any innocent victim as if it was his own!" 

"Amelia, I am not an Ally of Justice! Will you get that through your head? Flare Arrow!" 

The bandit mage had just cast a fireball. 

Time seemed to slow as the two spells collided. The flare arrow melted into the fireball. The combined ball of flame, more than twice as large as the original fireball, rippled uneasily. Zelgadis threw himself on top of Amelia. 

The fireball exploded. 

* * *

"I still think we shouldn't have taken the money." 

"Think of it as reward money. The reward for getting rid of those bandits was probably at least as much as we took. If Lina had been there, most of the bandit's hoard would now be in her pockets." 

After the explosion had ripped apart the bandit camp, Zelgadis had filled his money pouch (and Amelia's too for good measure) with gold, slung the unconscious princess over his shoulder, and left. 

"A true ally of justice doesn't take payment for good deeds and, besides, you only defeated the bandits by accident," Amelia muttered sulkily. Being knocked out by several hundred pounds of stone slamming into her at high speed had not improved her mood. 

"I told you," Zelgadis growled through clenched teeth, "I am not an ally of justice. I am a mercenary and I like being paid for my work." 

As if things weren't miserable enough, it started to rain. 

Zelgadis pulled up his hood and stomped off up the road. Amelia more slowly followed him. 

Amelia reminded herself that Zelgadis was just like this. For some incomprehensible reason he liked to act like a villain sometimes. He really was an ally of justice. She shouldn't get angry. He was just like this. On the fifteenth repetition she had convinced herself well enough to ask calmly, "Why don't you want to be an ally of justice?" 

"Why would I want to be an ally of justice?" Zelgadis retorted. His temper had cooled enough that he could speak almost calmly too. He had at least talked himself out of killing Amelia and had almost talked himself out of sending her back to Seyruun. "From what you've told me, it's a dangerous and thankless job. I may be a heartless, magic-using swordsman but I almost managed to free us without anyone getting hurt. Almost." He scowled. 

"They were _bandits_, Zelgadis-san. You're _supposed_ to hurt them." 

"You've been spending too much time around Lina." 

Amelia did not deign to answer that. 

As the silence stretched out, Zelgadis added, "You talked a lot about 'the irresistible power of justice' back there, but I didn't see you doing much 'crushing with righteous fury'." 

"I was tied up," Amelia replied with dignity, glaring emekia lances at her companion's back. She shoved her dripping bangs out of her eyes. 

"Then why didn't you untie yourself? If you could cast a fireball, you could have used a smaller fire spell to burn through your bonds, or a wind spell to cut through them or..." 

"...Or an unbinding spell like I used to untie myself the first time," Amelia realized. "I...I was so mad that I didn't think of that." She laughed weakly in embarrassment. 

Zelgadis reluctantly smiled. "Well, the bandits ended up crushed by 'the blazing fires of Justice' anyway." 

"I guess so." 

This time their smiles were more sincere. 

Amelia started describing how the bandits were afraid of her at first, and then, with a cute scowl, how they tied her up and mocked her. Zelgadis responded by telling her about the bandit leader and his paperwork. By the time the light started to fade, they had almost forgiven each other. 

By that time, they were also thoroughly soaked. Zelgadis was about to suggest that they set up camp for the night when Amelia sneezed. 

Zelgadis stared at her in mournful resignation. If he asked her to sleep on the ground while she was this cold and wet she would get sick, and then she would be even more trouble to take care of and slow him down even more, if that was possible. Luck was just against him today. 

Or maybe not. There was a crossroads ahead and a large inn at the crossroads. With all the gold he had taken from the bandits, they could certainly afford a hot meal and dry beds, even at such a doubtlessly overpriced establishment. It looked like they were saved. 

* * *

"A cheese makers' convention?" Zelgadis repeated in disbelief. 

"Yes, I'm afraid we don't have any free rooms." 

Zelgadis gestured toward his shivering companion. "You can see how cold and wet she is. Don't you have anywhere out of the rain for us to stay?" 

The innkeeper was a kind-hearted man. "Well...one convention member hasn't arrived yet. I suppose I could give you his room and stick him in with one of the other convention members if he does show up." 

"Thank you," Amelia said through chattering teeth. 

"It's room seven." He handed them the key. "You two are married, right?" 

"Uh, yes. Yes, we are," Zelgadis lied. He grabbed Amelia and dragged her off before she could protest. "Come on, love. Let's get you out of those wet clothes." 

"Zelgadis-san!" Amelia exclaimed in shock. He got her into the room and the door closed behind them before she could find adequate words to express her indignation. "I would never have believed that you were the sort of man who would take advantage of an innocent girl like this! Have I put too much trust in friendship? Will I now loose my sweet innocence?" 

Zelgadis almost laughed. "You sound just like Lina." Amelia looked ready to Dil Brando him. 

Zel held up his hands to ward her off. "I'm not taking advantage of you, I swear. I only said those things so we could get out of the rain. Now will you change into some dry clothes before you catch cold?" 

Amelia continued to glare at him suspiciously. 

"I'm going to get supper. Shall I bring you back some?" Zelgadis said in the reasonable tone of someone who is trying to make the other person's protests seem irrational by comparison. 

Amelia stared at him for a long moment, uncertain of his intentions. "Okay," she said at last. 

Zelgadis returned a several minutes later carrying a tray loaded with a large bowl of soup and two buns. Amelia was now sitting on the bed wearing the pajamas intended for the convention member. The shirt reached her knees. The pants were falling off her even though she was sitting down. She watched Zelgadis warily as he put the tray down on the dressing table. 

"Here's your soup," Zelgadis stated. "May I have the bottom half of those pajamas?" 

"You want me to be half naked? Zelgadis-san, you promised!" 

"I am not trying to take advantage of you." Zelgadis managed to keep his tone reasonable although a hint of clenched teeth showed through. "If I don't take these wet clothes off soon, I'll rust. Unless you want me to be completely naked for the rest of the night..." 

Amelia quickly wriggled out of the pajama pants. 

"Thank you," Zelgadis said with dignity. "I'll go change behind that folding screen, shall I?" 

Amelia nodded, also with great dignity, and went to get her soup. She couldn't help smiling as she ravenously gulped down her supper. It looked like he really wasn't trying to take advantage of her. That meant he was going to all this trouble just so that she could sleep in a warm, dry bed. That meant that he was an ally of justice after all! 

Behind the screen, Zelgadis peeled off his soaking wet clothes and pulled on the pajamas. He had to roll up the cuffs and tie the pants on with the drawstrings. The drawstrings wrapped all the way around his waist and back to the front again. He looked ridiculous. He was also showing a lot more stone than he was comfortable with, but it was the best he could do. He hung his wet clothes beside Amelia's on the clothes rack Amelia had dragged in front of the fireplace. It wasn't the only change she had made to the room. 

"Why are there a pillow and a blanket on the floor?" 

"They're for you. I don't want you to be uncomfortable during the night." 

"I'm sleeping in the bed." 

"But...I'm sleeping in the bed...Forcing a lady to sleep on the floor, that is what I call unchivalrous!" 

Zelgadis put on his I'm-being-perfectly-reasonable voice again. "We can both sleep in the bed. It's more than big enough." 

"Sleep together? But..." Amelia turned bright pink. 

"Not 'sleep together' that way." Zelgadis said disgustedly, trying futilely not to blush. 

"There's more than one way?" she asked with horrified curiosity. 

Zelgadis studied her face. Could she really be this innocent? "'Sleeping together' is a euphemism. When people 'sleep together' in the sense you mean they do much more than just sleep," he explained, blushing furiously. 

"Are you sure?" 

"Absolutely certain." 

"Then what does 'sleeping together' actually mean?" 

Zelgadis choked and turned still redder. "Get your father to explain it to you sometime, or, better yet, ask a woman." 

Amelia frowned but decided to leave the subject for the moment. When Zelgadis refused to talk about something it was impossible to pry information out of him. But, as far as she knew, he had never lied to her. 

"It still doesn't seem proper for us to sleep together, even in a non-euphemistic way." 

Zel's rational pose cracked. "I'm just as cold, wet and tired as you are, and I'm the one who got us this room. I refuse to be banished to the floor while you sleep in a bed big enough for a family of seven just to satisfy your sense of propriety!" 

Amelia hesitated. When he put it that way, it really didn't seem just to make him sleep on the floor. "Okay, you can sleep in the bed," she conceded reluctantly. 

"Thank you." Feeling rather ashamed of his outburst, Zelgadis climbed into his half of the bed. 

It was worth every moment of embarrassment. It was as deliciously soft and dry and warm as his wildest fantasies of what a bed could be. 

Amelia glanced over at him doubtfully. Then she extinguished the light and tucked herself in. The situation felt very awkward but they were both so tired that they soon fell asleep anyway. 

* * *

In her dream, Amelia was back at the bandit camp, but this time the bandits cowered away from her just words as she showed them the error of their ways. But wait! One of them was trying to get away! Amelia flew after him. In her dream she didn't need Levitation or Ray Wing; she was uplifted by the force of Justice. 

"Halt, villain!" Amelia cried. 

* * *

"Halt, villain!" Amelia cried. 

Zelgadis watched in horror as Amelia confronted Gaav, armed only with words and confidence. She didn't even notice Gaav appearing behind her. Before Zelgadis could scream a warning, in a flash of light, she was flying backwards into the rock wall with a sickening crunch and a faint cry of surprise. Zelgadis was at her side before she hit the ground. Blood poured out of her head and back and even her mouth, forming a pool around her within seconds. Zelgadis poured all the white energy he could gather into her body, knowing as he did that it was far too little for so serious an injury. Her life-force was fading. He couldn't save her. 

Zelgadis awoke with a half-vocalized cry of anguish...and saw Amelia's face. She was perfectly alive and smirking in her sleep. He slumped back limply onto his pillow. Like most of his recurring nightmares, the events had actually happened, although not in quite the same order or quite the same way as they had in the dream. 

Zelgadis lay awake for many minutes watching Amelia sleep and listening to the soothing sound of her breathing before he was able to fall asleep again. 

* * *

**_Author's Note:_** Have you ever noticed that people rarely run screaming at the sight of Zelgadis in the series? In fact, they rarely react to his unusual appearance much at all. Despite this, he always seems to expect townsfolk to greet him with flaming pitchforks. I wonder how often he gets the "Monster!" reaction when his friends aren't around. 

And yes, I think it is possible that Amelia really is that innocent. Her father seems to have taught her a lot about justice but not much about the ordinary facts of life (Can you imagine Prince Phil trying to explain "the birds and the bees"? Scary thought!), and her mother and sister aren't around to sit her down for a woman-to-woman chat. Of course, it's quite possible that she does know, but isn't this more fun? 


	4. A Good Deed Rewarded

**Chapter 4: A Good Deed Rewarded**

Amelia felt very, very tired. Her body hurt all over and she kept stumbling over every pebble or twig on the path. She hadn't felt good in days. The constant rain was wearing down both her body and spirit. She stumbled again. Everything felt slightly unreal. 

Everything became completely unreal when Zelgadis turned around and grabbed her by the shoulders. Frowning, he stared into her face for a long moment and then pressed his lips against her forehead. 

"You have a fever," he told her in annoyance. Without warning, he scooped her up in his arms. "You were slowing me down," he explained in response to her protests. 

Amelia subsided. She was too tired to fight about this right now. A few minutes later, she was asleep. Zelgadis trudged on into the night. 

He finally came upon an isolated temple. Temples meant healing. He could leave Amelia here while she recovered. He knocked on the gate. 

"Who knocks?" came a wary voice from the other side. 

"Travelers," Zelgadis replied. "My friend is sick." 

The door cautiously opened. The grey-robed priest on the other side smiled broadly and waved Zelgadis into the temple when he saw that they were exactly what Zelgadis had claimed. 

"Let's get her into a warm bed at once," he cried, leading Zelgadis to an inner part of the temple. "Forgive my earlier mistrust. We were attacked by bandits a week ago. They stole or broke almost everything valuable in the temple. That's why it looks so awful right now." 

Zelgadis looked around. The temple was tidy enough, although it was indeed barer than he would have expected. 

The priest opened a door. "This cell is empty now that Ben is dead. Put your friend in here. We'll take care of her." Zelgadis put Amelia down on the bed. He pulled off her sodden cloak and boots but otherwise left her fully dressed. 

"Now I'll show you to your cell," the priest said. 

"No, I'll continue my journey. Take this gold as thanks for taking care of Amelia." Zelgadis handed the priest a handful of gold coins. 

"Stay the night at least. You must be tired too, and you'll want to know if your friend is better in the morning." 

Zelgadis considered. He _was_ tired. He would have to stop for the night soon anyway. "I'll stay," he decided. 

The priest smiled and opened the door of another small, plainly furnished room. "You can have Dom's room." 

Zelgadis nodded and walked in. As the priest turned to go, Zel couldn't stop himself from asking, "Amelia will be alright, won't she?" 

The priest hesitated. "It's too early to tell. I hope so." 

Zelgadis closed the door and sat down thoughtfully on the bed. Amelia was like a ray of sunshine in his life. Sometimes she was like the sunbeam that stabbed him in the eye on mornings when he just wanted to sleep in, or like the sunny afternoons that mocked his fits of black despair. Still, she was a light in his life, and the world would be a darker, bleaker place if that light was ever extinguished. If she died because of him he would never forgive himself. 

Fevers weren't serious enough to kill someone, right? 

He slept uneasily that night. 

* * *

Amelia woke up with no idea where she was. It was a small, stark room containing only a bed, a small table, a stool, and a mat woven from rags. The floor and unadorned walls were made of stone. It didn't look like an inn room, but it seemed safe and pleasant. 

She relaxed back into the mattress. She still felt very weak. 

She had almost drifted off to sleep again when the door opened. Her visitor was a gentle-looking man in grey priest's robes. "Good morning," he smiled. 

Amelia smiled uncertainly back. "Good morning. Where am I?" 

The man pulled the stool over beside the bed and sat down. "This is a small, isolated temple devoted to the Earth Dragon King. We priests here have devoted our lives to quiet contemplation and healing the occasional sick traveler like you. We used to also guard a large collection of holy texts and relics but they were stolen ten days ago." 

"How awful! Who would be depraved enough to rob a peaceful temple?" 

"I believe it was a group of bandits who recently established themselves near here. They call themselves the 'Tiger Claws.'" 

"Don't worry. Zelgadis-san and I will get your possessions back, and wipe those evildoers from the face of the earth!" Her passion burned even hotter than her fever. 

"You are very kind to say that, but please lie down again. You need to rest quietly." 

Amelia obediently abandoned her dramatic stance and crawled back under the blankets. 

"I'll go get you some breakfast." The priest left before Amelia could tell him that she wasn't hungry. 

Amelia closed her eyes again. She did not see Zelgadis hesitantly peer in the door. She did, however, feel his cool lips press against her hot forehead. 

She opened listless eyes. "What are you doing?" 

Zel sprang back, waving his hands. "Nothing! I was just checking to see if your fever has gone down. My mouth is the only part of my body that's still temperature-sensitive enough to, um, sense temperatures." 

"Oh." 

At that moment the priest returned carrying a breakfast tray. "Oh good, I hoped I would catch you before you left. As you can see, your friend is much better. In a week or so she should be completely recovered." 

"Zelgadis-san, you aren't leaving?" 

"Yes, I am. You heard what he said. You won't be ready to travel again for at least a week." 

"But I have to help you on your quest! A true friend does not abandon a friend in need." Zelgadis idly wondered which of them was which in that last sentence. "And we have to punish the bandits who attacked this monastery." 

"Why do we have to do that?" 

Anger flared up in Amelia's eyes. "Because they are _bandits_, of course. And because this temple has helped us. Only someone completely lacking in morality would refuse to punish the bandits and return the stolen artifacts to the temple!" 

In general, Zelgadis took the description 'completely lacking in morality' as a compliment, but not from Amelia. He wavered. 

During her last speech, Amelia had leapt to her feet again. That had not been a good idea. Her sudden transition from limply horizontal to rigidly vertical had left all her blood somewhere below her neckline. Her vision turned to blackness punctuated by flashes of light and her knees slowly caved in. 

Zel awkwardly caught Amelia as she collapsed. "Amelia!" 

"I'm...okay." Amelia clutched at her friend's shirt as he lowered her back onto the bed. Zelgadis experienced a terrible sense of deja-vu. 

"Zelgadis-san, promise me that you will stay here until I'm well again." 

"I..." 

"Promise!" 

Zelgadis sighed in defeat. "I promise." 

"Good." Amelia relaxed wearily. 

"Um...would you like some oatmeal, miss?" the priest hesitantly asked. 

* * *

True to the priest's words, it was a week before Amelia was ready to travel again. Zelgadis spent most of that time wandering impatiently around the surrounding woods like a chained wolf on a short tether, but he kept his promise. He didn't rush Amelia's recovery either. On the contrary, he told her sternly to stay in bed every time she tried to convince him that she was well enough to go slaughter bandits now. "If you relapse, I'm not going to wait for you to recover." 

Finally, the priests declared Amelia cured after she kept up her spunk for an entire day. The sorceress and the swordsman set out early the next morning for the bandit camp. Amelia rode most of the way on the temple's donkey. The kind-hearted priests had insisted that she take it so that she wouldn't wear herself out. 

* * *

Amelia and Zelgadis lay on their bellies on a hill overlooking the Tiger Claws' camp. 

"It's small but well guarded," Zelgadis commented. 

"Let's Raywing into the camp and blast everyone in sight." 

"Hmm...a simple plan, but it might work." 

"It always does for Lina-san." 

Zelgadis nodded. " I'll attack from the front. You wait until the fighting starts and then surprise them from behind. Try not to damage the buildings. The books and relics are in one of them." 

"Okay!" 

Zelgadis gave Amelia a minute to get into position before he summoned the bubble of wind that served him as both transportation and shield. He floated down into the camp, arms menacingly crossed. Bandits stared up at him in surprise. 

Zelgadis couldn't resist making at least a token attempt at negotiation. "I heard that you recently acquired some valuable holy artifacts. I am interested in them." 

"Yeah? What are you offering?" one of the bandits queried bluntly. 

"How about your lives?" A ball of glowing energy appeared in Zelgadis' right hand. 

The bandits drew weapons and rushed at him. Many fell under his first wave of flare arrows but many more continued their attack undeterred. 

Just as Zelgadis reached for his sword in preparation for hand-to-hand combat, a freeze arrow took out two of his attackers. Amelia was standing on the roof of a nearby building, already launching a second freeze arrow. 

"Halt!" she cried. 

The fighting did not exactly cease, but it slowed enough that the fighters could eye her warily while still keeping their guard up against each other. 

"You attacked a temple full of peaceful priests. That is pure evil. The heavens will not forgive you for harming such holy men, and neither will I! Fireball!" 

Charred bandits flew away from the explosion in all directions. The ones who were still left standing divided their attention between the two attackers. 

"Maybe they'll kill each other off and leave us in peace," one bandit muttered to his friend hopefully. Then he realized that, despite their different agendas, the invaders were apparently working together. 

"Burst Rondo!" "Emekia Lance!" Amelia and Zelgadis shouted simultaneously. 

As always, once the fighting started all their stylistic differences vanished. For some inexplicable reason, Zelgadis and Amelia's attacks had always meshed well, and their many adventures had turned that natural compatibility into unstoppable teamwork. The bandits fought well but they stood no chance against the combined might of the two shamanists. 

Soon charred and frozen bandits covered most of the ground. "Diem Wing," Amelia dropped the last bandit headfirst down the well. 

"Victory!" she sang, thrusting her arms joyfully skyward. 

Zelgadis walked toward the building that the bandits had been protecting most fiercely. As he expected, there was a cleverly concealed trapdoor in the floor leading down into the treasure stash. It was locked, but his stone fists soon solved that problem. 

"Amelia, get the donkey," he ordered absentmindedly. 

By the time she got back, he had all the books and relics stacked neatly on the intact part of the floor. All the promising and obviously non-religious books and magical artifacts were already in his pockets. There had not been many of them. 

When Zelgadis stepped out into the sunlight with the first armload of books, he discovered not just the donkey but a cart as well. "I found it by the gate," Amelia explained proudly. 

Zelgadis wordlessly placed the books in the cart. 

* * *

At first, still riding on the exhilaration of the fight, Amelia had fun sending the donkey trotting down the road at high speed while Zelgadis browsed through the books, but before long she was curled up fast asleep in the back while he drove. Her illness had taken more out of her than she would ever admit. 

* * *

They arrived back at the temple just as the sun's last, thin edge sank below the horizon. The priests rushed out to greet them. 

"Did you do it?" 

"Did you get the relics back?" 

"Did you kill the bandits?" 

"Are you wounded?" 

"Are you tired?" 

Amelia triumphantly held up books in both hands. "Fear not! In the name of Justice, we destroyed the Tiger Claws and brought back your holy relics." 

There were enthusiastic cheers. "Thank you! Thank you! How can we ever repay you?" 

"There's no need to thank us. The knowledge that justice has been served is reward enough." 

"Actually," Zelgadis interrupted. "I would like to study these books. They might provide a clue to my cure." 

"Of course. We let all seekers of knowledge to look at our books. _You_ are more than welcome to do so." 

Unsurprisingly, the books proved to be completely useless. Zelgadis had already read most of them in the course of his search. The only exceptions were the two in languages he couldn't read. 

"What are these?" he asked the abbot when the man came to check on him. 

"Those? The red one is the Commandments of Ahab the Wise." 

"Never heard of him." 

"He was a holy man who lived six hundred years ago in the farthest south. Er...short of the Barrier, I mean. He believed that people should live in peace and brotherhood." 

"So that one's useless." Zelgadis put it aside. "And this one?" 

"I have no idea. None of us can read it and it's been here for so long that everyone has forgotten what it is. It does have a nice cover though, doesn't it?" 

Zelgadis separated his face from the table with a faint _twang_. He flipped through the pages with an expression of frustration. 

"I know I've seen this language somewhere before, but I can't remember where. And I can't read it." 

"Take it with you." 

"What?" 

"Take the book with you. It's of no use to us, or rather, we're of no use to it. Maybe you can discover it's meaning." 

"Do you mean that?" 

"I wouldn't have said it if I didn't." 

"Uh...thank you." 

The priest smiled serenely and drifted away. 

* * *

Sometime in the week of Amelia's illness, it had stopped raining. The sun was shining warmly in a blue, blue sky as the travelers turned their feet toward their destination again. 

"What a beautiful day!" Amelia exclaimed, skipping up the road. 

"Don't tire yourself out too fast," Zelgadis warned her. "We have a long way to go before we reach our inn tonight." 

* * *

**_Author's Note:_** Religion in the Slayers world seems to be as eclectic and complicated as in ours. Sometimes it follows the hierarchy of gods and darklords that the main characters interact with. For example, the central temple of Seyruun is devoted to Ceipheed. Other times, it seems to follow some entirely different system. For example, Ashford the cook prays to the 'god of cookery'. There are also local holy objects like Flagoon which may receive as much worship as the gods themselves. It is impossible to say to what degree humans worship the dragon gods, but I think a temple to the Earth Dragon King like the one in this chapter is quite possible, if not necessarily normal. 

A note on spelling: I use a free mix of American and Canadian spelling depending on my mood, which country I happen to be in at the time of writing, and how indulgent I feel toward my (American) spell checker. For Slayers names, I try to use the same spellings as the official subtitled version (ex. 'Seyruun' instead of 'Sairoon' or 'Sailloon'.) That's mostly for the sake of having a consistent rule, but I also tend to like those spellings. For instance, I really think that 'Amelia' should be spelled with an 'l' because 'Amelia', like 'Christopher' and 'Alfred', is a real, Western name. 'Ameria' isn't (although it is pretty). 


	5. Think Before You Drink

**Chapter 5: Think Before You Drink**

The sunset reached its peak and then began to fade. "I don't think we're going to make it there tonight," Amelia said. 

Zelgadis poked in frustration at the spot on the map clearly labeled 'Transformation Spring of Kuska.' "According to this map, we should almost be there." 

Amelia dragged his arm towards her so she could read the map. "'Trackless wilderness,'" she read. "All we know is that we're in there somewhere." 

They had been semi-lost all day. They were pretty sure they were still headed in the right direction, more or less, but distances were hard to judge and there was no guarantee that the map was accurate in any case. 

Zel sighed, "Let's set up camp." 

Amelia started gathering firewood with a promptness that suggested she had already been thinking about how to turn this clearing into a campsite. Zelgadis went to refill his water flask and look for fish in the nearby creek. 

Amelia had a fire crackling merrily by the time Zelgadis returned. She handed him a slightly stale roll that they had bought that morning in the last town they passed through and started nibbling on a second one herself. 

"Tell me about this spring again," she requested. 

"You're the one who looked it up." 

"Tell me about it anyway." 

Zelgadis obliged. "According to legend, it turns people into animals and animals into people. The best known story about it tells of a man who married his beloved cat after a sip from the spring turned her human. Another well known story tells how a clever man tricked an evil money lender into drinking some water from the spring. The money lender instantly became a jackal." 

Zelgadis wet his throat with some water from his flask. "I hope there is some truth behind the legends." 

An odd expression crossed his face. He clutched at his stomach and collapsed into an empty pile of clothes. 

It took Amelia's brain a few seconds to register what just happened. Then she stared in disbelief for several more seconds. Finally, she went over to the clothes and poked at them. They twitched. There was something inside them after all. Amelia reached down the neck hole and pulled out...a turtle. 

It was quite a lovely turtle. It was blue with the occasional thicker, darker blue scale mixed in to give it character. It was not a particularly large turtle but it was surprisingly heavy for its size, probably because it was made of stone. Amelia needed both hands to lift it up so that she could look at it more closely. It had the most bewildered expression she had ever seen on a turtle's face. 

"Zelgadis-san?" Amelia asked uncertainly. 

The turtle glared at her. It somehow managed to look exactly like Zelgadis despite the beak. 

"Okay..." Amelia tried to think what to do next. "It looks like we found the transformation spring after all, and it really does work. Now how am I going to turn you back?" 

The turtle opened its mouth and gave a faint hiss, but Amelia couldn't understand it. 

"Well, I guess you could drink more of that water. Hopefully now that you're a turtle it will turn you back into a person." 

Amelia poured some water from Zelgadis' water flask into the cap and offered it to the turtle. The turtle lapped at the water eagerly. After a few seconds it collapsed with a pained expression and expanded into...a bird. What kind was hard to identify because of the metal feathers. 

The bird turned its head backwards so it could examine itself. It rattled its wings in disgust. 

"Oh dear," Amelia said. "That didn't work." 

The bird poked imperiously at the flask. 

"You want to try again?" 

The bird nodded. 

Again Amelia filled the cap with water. Again Zelgadis bent his head to drink. Again his form changed. 

"What a cute bunny!" 

The expression on the rabbit's face changed from inquiry to pure horror. 

It _was_ a cute bunny, despite apparently having been carved from two-toned blue stone. It even had a cute little wire-covered tail. 

Amelia picked it up and cuddled it in her arms. "Don't worry, Zelga-bunny. I'll figure out some way to restore you to your almost-human self. Eventually." The rabbit tried to kick her. 

"I don't think you should drink any more of that water," Amelia responded to what she perceived to be the reason for the kick. "Who knows what you'll turn into next." 

She knew him well enough to guess his answer. It would be, "Any shape is better than this one." 

Amelia resisted for the amount of time it took her to finish her dinner and feed Zelgadis a handful of grass. Then the alternately furious and pleading looks he was sending out got the better of her. 

"Oh, alright!" She poured him one last capful of water. This time when his shape settled he was a snake. He made just as handsome a snake as he had a turtle. 

Amelia sighed. She didn't hate snakes but she wasn't very fond of them either. She did like bunnies. 

The snake lifted its head off the ground and looked at her. 

"You're a snake. You won't bite me, will you?" 

Snakes have no sense of hearing. Zelgadis just stared at her for another long moment and then slithered over to his abandoned clothes. Amelia went to bed too. For the moment, there was nothing else to do. She wrapped her cloak around herself tightly because it was a chilly night. 

* * *

Amelia awoke to find a snake curled up under her chin. Fortunately, she was the sort of person who wakes up alert without any memory lapses and, also fortunately, she decided not to get upset about Zelgadis sleeping with her uninvited again. 

After brushing the leaves out of her hair and clothes and breakfasting on the second-to-last stale roll and a few sips of water from her half-empty flask, she prepared to strike camp. She wrapped all Zelgadis' clothes into a bundle and tied them onto his sword, which she slung over her shoulder. Then she picked up the snake. 

"Do you promise not to bite me?" 

The snake moved its head in a way she chose to interpret as agreement. Amelia warily draped it around her neck. It slithered around until it was comfortable. Amelia froze at the strange sensation of powerful, scale-covered muscles flexing against her skin. She gritted her teeth (although the sensation was not really unpleasant, just strange) and set out downstream along the bank of the creek. Hopefully the villagers of Kuska would know how to undo the transformation. 

* * *

They didn't. 

"The way we deal with the spring is to not drink the water. Travelers? We don't get many travelers here, not as such. Of course, if a strange animal walks into town, we don't ask questions. If it's dangerous we kill it; if it's edible we eat it; and otherwise we just shoo it away. It's mostly just transformed wildlife." 

"Don't any of you ever drink the spring water by accident? What do you do if that happens?" 

Most of the villagers laughed at her and said things like, "Depends on how much the family liked him." 

One woman pointed vindictively at another woman. "Her brute of a son pushed my poor, little Denis into the spring. I had to travel for _three weeks_ before I found a sorcerer who could transform him back!" 

"Will you get over it? That was five years ago!" the other woman protested. 

"Well I still haven't forgiven you or your son." 

They both stuck their noses in the air and turned their backs on each other. 

Of course! Now Amelia knew what to do, but she would need somewhere more private. 

The villagers took delight in being unhelpful again. No, they didn't have an inn. Why would they need one when they didn't get any travelers? No, they didn't have any other place for her and her snake to stay. Food? Well... They looked at each other, trying to think of some reason to refuse. Amelia had had enough. 

"You who refuse to help a traveler in trouble and mock her when she asks perfectly reasonable questions, you are the kind of people I call evil! Now, will you apologize or will you force me to punish you for your unfriendly ways?" The air around her started to crackle with blue energy fed by her rage. 

"We're sorry! We're sorry!" the villagers chorused. They quickly offered her food, which she conscientiously paid for, and lodging in each other's houses, which she refused. 

"I don't want to stay any longer in such a poisonous place." Amelia walked quickly out of the town, but detoured into a barn just before she left the settlement entirely. 

She unwrapped the snake from where it was basking on her shoulders and set it down on the straw-covered floor. "Stay there, Zelgadis-san. I'm going to try something." 

Amelia pulled out her spellbook. The snake looked somewhat apprehensive. Amelia flipped through the book until she found the spell she wanted. She had written it there the day after Zelgadis had last reentered her life. It was the general anti-transformation spell. 

She had never cast it before, but hopefully she could figure it out quickly now. She read the spell over several times until she thought she had it memorized. 

With her palms stretched out toward the snake, she began the incantation. 

"Ruler of shape and nature..." 

She could feel the transformation spells wrapped around him like cords. She started to tug on them. 

"...power of patterns, mold of kind..." 

The spells were definitely coming loose in places now. 

"...break the bonds of this false form! Zeran Morph!" 

A cloud formed around Zelgadis. When it cleared... 

"Oops." 

The snake now had tiny metal wings and exactly one bunny ear. In addition, it had thickened noticeably in the middle. It wiggled its parts experimentally, trying to figure out what shape it was now. It gave Amelia a reproachful look. 

"I'll try that again." 

This time she just pulled on the outermost layer. It came away, leaving Zelgadis a rabbit again, although he still had vestigial wings. Amelia paused to rest. Casting unfamiliar spells was hard work. She absently stroked the rabbit's ears, annoying him considerably. 

As soon as she felt ready, she cast Zeran Morph again. This time when the smoke cleared he was a bird. Once more and he was a turtle. She had to rest again and eat a mango for energy, but the spell was definitely getting easier with practice. The turtle pawed impatiently at her foot. 

Amelia licked the juice off her fingers and cast the spell one more time. She easily brushed away the last layer of transformation and even tried tugging on the chimera spell, but it was too tight and much too strong to budge. 

The smoke cleared. 

Amelia spun around, blushing furiously. An equally blushing Zelgadis reached around her for his clothes. 

They emptied out Zelgadis' water flask beside the stream as they left town. They never found out about the wave of transformations that followed. 

* * *

"That was an interesting spell you used back there," Zelgadis remarked. "Is it one of the ones you copied out in Seyruun?" 

"Yes, the first one." 

"Would it work on a transformation like this?" Zelgadis picked a handful of the little yellow wildflowers that grew beside the path. "Transformation," he muttered. Under his stare, the plants reshaped themselves into a rose. He handed it to Amelia. 

"How lovely!" She inhaled its perfume. "You must teach me that spell." 

"Later. First try your anti-transformation spell." 

It was a pity to unmake such a beautiful rose, but Amelia did as he requested. The spell on the rose was much tighter than the spells on Zelgadis had been, but Amelia still succeeded in stripping it away. 

"Now teach me Transformation." 

Zelgadis glanced around: wilderness and more wilderness. He might as well teach Amelia the spell. There was nothing better to do. 

"Alright. It's easier to start with a model to work from." He picked a blue flower and handed it to Amelia. "Concentrate on the essence of the two flowers and reshape one to match the essence of the other." 

"Essence?" 

"I'm not sure how to describe it. It's the core nature of a thing, the part that knows what shape it's supposed to be." 

That sounded a lot like the instructions Amelia had been given when she was learning healing spells. She tried looking at the flowers as if she was going to heal them. "What's the incantation?" 

Zelgadis told her. 

Amelia chanted it, slowly building up power. "Transformation!" 

She shoved the yellow flowers into a new shape. "Oh." The results were misshapen, to say the least. They also looked nothing like the blue flower. 

"Keep practicing," Zelgadis advised. 

"I know. They first time I tried to cast Fireball, I only got smoke." 

Amelia did keep practicing. By the time they were free of the wilderness, she was on her tenth set of flowers because the previous ones had wilted or been deformed beyond recovery, but her transformed flowers looked pretty much like their models and she could cast the spell without the full incantation. 

* * *

"Where are we going next?" Zelgadis asked over dinner that night. 

"There's rumored to be a chimera maker to the west of here. You thought he might know chimera making and unmaking techniques that aren't in the books. His name is Diol, I think." 

A man leaned over from the table behind Zelgadis. "Don't go there!" 

"Huh?" Amelia and Zelgadis stared at him. "Don't go where?" Amelia added. 

"The Chimera Forest! I heard you talking about going there." 

Amelia started to correct him, "No, we're going to..." 

"Tell us more about this chimera forest," Zel interrupted. 

"I used to live in a town to the west of here. It was a good town too. It was right on the edge of the loveliest little forest you ever saw, and the people were friendly and the soil was rich and...well, you get the idea. Then, about eight years back, the forest started to become infested with monsters - beastmen, chimeras, trolls, dragons, you name it. The infestation got worse with every passing year until it was more than your life was worth to go in there. The monsters didn't stay in the forest either. I used to get the weirdest things wandering by my house, and some of them were meat-eaters. I had to give up and leave my home before the monsters killed one of my kids. My advice is stay away from there. It isn't safe for anyone human." 

"How scary!" Amelia shivered. She was clinging to Zelgadis. He endured it because he preferred clinging to her other reaction to fear: beating up everything in sight. 

Zelgadis thanked the man for the warning. "We hadn't heard about the chimera forest before." 

"Then what were you talking about earlier?" 

"We're going to talk to a chimera maker named Diol," Amelia told him. 

The man frowned. "I've heard of him. He's a nasty one. He's always making something or other, and it's never anything that does any good to anyone. Usually his creations terrorize the surrounding towns until they manage to get themselves killed or lost. I'd advise staying away from him too. He has a nasty habit of turning his guests into chimeras." 

Zelgadis turned to face him fully. "We can take care of ourselves." 

The man's eyes bulged out. "You're," he gulped, "you're one of them...monster." 

"I'm looking for a cure." 

The man slid away, eyes wide with fear. 

Zelgadis stared morosely down at his plate. 

* * *

Amelia lay on her back, staring up at the stars. She couldn't seem to fall asleep. On the other side of the almost burned out campfire, Zelgadis sighed in his sleep. Amelia rolled over on her side and stared at him instead. His wire hair glowed faintly in the moonlight but his face was completely lost in shadow. She idly traced the curve of a white clad shoulder with her eyes, and then sorted out which knee belonged to which leg. 

Her eyes wandered back up his arm to his face. The darkness hid all signs of his chimeraness. In her imagination, she made his shining hair soft and his hidden face human. His nose would be straight and narrow and his jaw would be firm but pointed. His eyes, now closed in sleep, would have dark eyelashes and eyebrows. His skin would be smooth and pale. She amused herself for quite awhile making fine adjustments to his imaginary features. 

Then a new thought occurred to her. Why just imagine him with human looks? With the transformation spell Zelgadis had taught her, she could _make_ him look human. Wasting no more time on idle speculation, Amelia got to work. Her first attempt at transformation turned his skin a rather garish shade of pink, as a subsequent light spell revealed. Her second fixed the color and smoothed out some of the rocks. In the end, her transformation ended at the neckline and he still looked more like a statue than a man, but hopefully he would consider it an improvement. Finally sleepy, she lay down beside the campfire again. She soon fell asleep, delighted by her good deed. 

* * *

The sleeping Zelgadis had no idea of his recent transformation. In his dream, he was walking through a desert that he somehow knew to be inside a temple. Huge stone tablets in ordered rows stretched to every horizon as far as the eye could see. Each one contained some fragment of rare or forgotten lore. Together, they contained the entire mind of a god. He could hear Lina and Xellos' footsteps behind him and see Gourry's bright hair out of the corner of his eye. Amelia was walking in front of him. 

A crimson-haired giant in an orange trench coat, the dark lord Gaav, appeared and started threatening them. Zelgadis watched sadly as he and his friends fled, leaving Gaav to blast apart the stone tablets around him. The human party tumbled onto the ground in front of the temple just in time to see it explode in a blaze of light. 

The dream skipped ahead several weeks to a cliff inhabited by dragons. Zelgadis flinched in his sleep. This scene meant the recurring nightmare in which he had to either watch Amelia bleeding to death or else leap to save her and end up mortally wounded himself. To his surprise, that nightmare didn't materialize. Instead, he found himself sitting against the rock. Lina, who was collapsed beside him, was describing her journey into the cave of the true Clair Bible. Gaav had showed up again and destroyed it as he had the earlier temple. Zelgadis groaned both in his sleep and in his dream. Again the information he needed to find his cure had been almost within his reach. Again it had been destroyed before he could see it. Had some god or monster decreed that he could never find his cure? 

* * *

Amelia yawned and looked around in excitement. What would her handiwork look like in daylight? To her great disappointment, Zelgadis was as blue and rocky as usual. What had happened? "Did I just dream it?" she muttered to herself. The restlessly dreaming chimera gave no answer. 

"Oh well, I can try again tomorrow night," Amelia promised herself. 

* * *

**_Author's Note:_** Transformation magic definitely exists in the Slayers' world There are natural shape changers like werewolves as well as the more magical mazoku and sentient dragons. We even get to see our heroes turned into dolls in one of the silly episodes of Slayers NEXT. Nevertheless, transformation magic doesn't fit neatly into the black/white/shamanist magic scheme of the Slayers world. I suppose you could classify it as a kind of curse, which would make it black magic, but that doesn't seem right to me. Transformation is not necessarily an evil/insane/destructive sort of act, so why should it be black magic? Chimera making is the same. It involves creating and nurturing life, but it definitely isn't (pure) white magic. I guess the answer is that both techniques are useful to plot and/or silliness. We should just use them if they're convenient, make up technical-sounding details when necessary, and try not to ask too many questions. That is the long version of why I never classify the transformation magic in this story and why Amelia, who doesn't use black magic, and Zelgadis, who rarely uses white magic, can both use it. 


	6. A Monstrous Affair

**Chapter 6: A Monstrous Affair**

"Amelia, stay here. I'll be back in a few hours," Zelgadis said. 

"Zelgadis-san, in the name of friendship I cannot allow you to go in there alone!" 

"The man said that this forest is a haven for beastmen, chimeras and other monsters. I'll fit right in. You would be in danger. So stay here. Good bye." 

Zelgadis walked into the Chimera Forest. Amelia stared after him with a worried, defiant look. 

* * *

Zelgadis caught his first chimera before he even reached the forest. It was a very simple one, a winged pig. This was the perfect opportunity to finally test one of his chimera unmaking spells. If it worked, it would separate this chimera into the original component animals. If it failed...well, he doubted anyone would miss the creature. 

He chanted the improvised words of the spell and pulled on the feeling of _border_ inside the creature. The pig screamed in agony as a ghostly duck with opaque wings rose out of its back. Zelgadis made a mental note to put his test subject to sleep first the next time he tried this. The pig collapsed. The duck landed on the ground. Suddenly its body vanished, leaving two unattached wings flapping in weak death throes. Zelgadis calmly noted that separated pieces would not survive independently if they did not contain enough of the original creature. 

Now, the next question was how much of the original creature was necessary for survival. He checked the pig for a pulse. Good, it was still alive. It had just passed out from the pain. This spell wouldn't be much use if it killed even such a complete specimen. He cast a healing spell on the pig to fix any internal damage the separation might have caused. He would have to work components of a healing spell into his chimera spell in the future. 

He left the pig sleeping and walked on into the forest. 

A sentry intercepted him before he was a minute past the first tree. It looked like an extremely ugly humanoid boar. "Halt!" it shouted. It looked Zelgadis over appraisingly. "I haven't seen you before." 

"I haven't been here before." 

The beastman immediately threw his arms open as if to embrace Zelgadis. "Then welcome to our company, brother! Would you like me to guide you to our leaders?" 

"No, I'll find my own way." 

"They tend to be at the center. Just keep going straight. I hope we'll meet again, brother." 

Zelgadis nodded curtly and walked on. 

He soon came upon a very strange creature. It had originally been an inoffensive-looking human but now it had the legs of a deer (just two, attached like human legs), a long rat's tail, fluffy white chicken wings, and, as a crowning indignity, large, grey rabbit ears. All-in-all, it looked like the idea of 'prey' personified. 

The creature startled violently as Zelgadis stepped soundlessly into its field of view. "I'm sorry, sir! _Please_ don't hurt me, sir!" it cried. 

It's face was elongated into a small muzzle with buck teeth. Its human arms ended in thumbless paws, which clutched a half-eaten apple nervously. 

"I'm not going to hurt you, unless you give me a reason to," Zelgadis reassured it, disconcerted. 

"Oh thank you, sir! I can see you are a kind person," the creature fawned. 

"I'm looking for information. Perhaps you can help me." Hopefully it wasn't as useless as it looked. 

"Oh certainly, sir! If there is anything I can do for you, just ask." 

"I'm looking for a way to become human again. Do you know anything that might help me?" 

"If I knew how to become human again, do you think I would still look like this?" the chimera replied bitterly, sounding completely sincere for the first time in the conversation. 

"Your knowledge may prove more useful than you realize. Start by telling me about how you became a chimera." 

The grotesque little creature collected its thoughts and straightened out of its habitual cringe. "I was a delivery boy," it said, "but there was this one weird guy who lived up on a mountain cliff who was always getting these weird, squishy packages - like raw meat but stranger smelling. I used to complain about the smelly packages and the climb. One day I must have complained once too often because he turned me into this in revenge." 

"Tell me, in detail, everything you can remember about being transformed into a chimera." 

"I don't remember any of it. Diol - the old weirdo on the mountain - said, 'You're perfect for my next project,' and he put me to sleep. When I woke up, I was like this and Diol was laughing gleefully. I ran away from him but I couldn't run away from my own body. Everywhere I went people either screamed and ran away at the sight of me or tormented me because I was helpless. I couldn't find companionship or acceptance of any kind until I came here." 

Zelgadis listened silently as words tumbled out of the creature, "This place is great. Here nobody treats you like a freak just because you're a chimera. Everybody's a chimera or beastman or other sort of monster so they know what it's like. Do you know the story of this place?" 

"No." 

"There was a group of assorted beastmen working in an army and they noticed that they always got the dirtiest, most dangerous and most menial jobs and the lowest pay so they decided to form their own society where beastmen and monsters wouldn't have to fear persecution by humans. It took them years to make it happen, but they finally found this forest and moved in, and chimeras and beastmen have been pouring in ever since." 

It sounded too good to be true, so it probably was. "You didn't seem so free from persecution when you first saw me," Zelgadis remarked suspiciously. 

The creature's ears drooped forlornly. "Um, that's because I'm weak. Status here is based on strength. The powerful ones are always fighting duels over it, but I...It's still better than outside. Oh sir, I hope you succeed in your quest. I would give anything to be human again, and just knowing that you're looking gives me hope." 

Zelgadis hesitated. This was not the best time or place and the chimera was much too complicated to make a good test subject. It was an unnecessary distraction. Damn his sense of pity! 

"Would you really do anything to become human again?" Zelgadis asked, "Would you risk death or crippling?" 

"You know a way I can be cured? Yes, _yes_, I would do anything, risk anything, to get my old body back!" 

"I don't know if this will work - it probably won't - but I might be able to make you a little more human." 

"Do it." 

Zelgadis raised his hands. This time he started with the most powerful sleep spell he could cast. Then he removed the wings and tail the way he had unmade the winged pig. If he used that technique on other parts of the chimera, however, he would leave the man crippled. He would have to try anti-chimera technique number two: localized transformation. 

Zelgadis started with the ears. He forced them to shrink down, lose their hair and assume human curves. They were still rabbit ears under the spell but they looked human now. Something about the feel of the spell prompted him to try something different on the paws. The body remembered what it should look like. Zelgadis drew that memory of humanity down the arms and molded the hands to fit it. Then he did the same to the face and finally the long legs. Then, because he was a neat and thorough person, he hunted out the last traces of inhumanity in the rest of the body. He considered redoing the ears as well, but he was getting very tired. Unusually keen hearing wouldn't hurt the man and hopefully the transformation would hold for a few months at least. He collapsed on a log and removed the sleep spell. 

The young man who had once been a pathetic-looking chimera slowly uncurled with a yawn. He startled and stared at his now-human hands. He wiggled the thumbs. He patted his face. He stared at his legs. He tried to look over his own shoulder to confirm that the wings and tail were gone. He laughed, hysterical with delight. "Oh thank you! How can I ever thank you?" 

"Will you be able to get out of the forest safely now that you're human?" 

"The sentry looks like a warthog, right?" 

Zelgadis nodded. 

"I can get by that guy, no problem." 

The young man vanished into the bushes. Zelgadis wondered how the inhabitants of the town would react to a nearly-naked young man wandering into town out of nowhere. A faint smile curved his lips. His anti-chimera spells had worked even better than he could have hoped. 

* * *

The former chimera did escape the forest without being seen, but only because of the short, black-haired girl distracting the sentry. 

"Halt!" 

Amelia looked around until she spotted the boarman. In her experience anything that ugly was usually evil, but it would be unjust to judge by appearance alone. She decided to be tactful. "Hello, Mr. Pig." 

"No humans allowed in this forest. Go home, little girl. I'm just warning you this time, but if I ever see you again, I'll kill you." 

Amelia gasped in shock. "You would kill me just because I'm human? That's evil! Fireball!" 

Amelia left the beastman smoking and went straight on into the forest, well satisfied that justice had been done. 

* * *

Zelgadis spotted a herd of pinkish-orange and green things with purple spines. Something about them struck him as familiar so he caught one for further study. 

It launched its spines at him, but they bounced off. Now defenseless, it was reduced to ineffectually trying to bite him as he tucked it under his arm. The rest of the herd scattered in all directions, chittering in terror. 

Now where had he seen that magical style before? The answer finally came to Zelgadis after much searching of his memories. The style reminded him of a sorcery-guild mage he had briefly worked for in Atlas City a year or so ago, Demia the Blue. Now that Zelgadis thought about it, Demia's specialty had been chimeras. Fortunately, he did not use humans in his experiments. If he had, Zelgadis would never have agreed to work as his bodyguard. Demia was actually quite a skilled craftsman despite being on the wrong side of the brink of sanity. His work with brass demons had been especially impressive. 

Zelgadis looked the garish little animal over again. It was beautifully put together but it was definitely the product of an unhealthy mind. 

It snarled at him. His curiosity now satisfied, he let it go. 

* * *

A very small beastman cub was curled up on the ground crying. Amelia immediately hurried over to give him a hug. "What's wrong?" she asked. 

The fuzzy little creature sniffled. "I'm lost," he wailed. "Momma told me not to wander off on my own, but I was chasing a bunny, and it went real far, and it got _away_, and now I can't find my way back." 

"I'll help you find your way home," Amelia volunteered immediately. "Now dry your tears. I'm sure your momma must be very worried about you." 

"'kay." The cub wiped his eyes on his grimy sleeve. 

Then he got a good look at Amelia for the first time. His eyes became as round as saucers. "You're a human, aren't you?" 

"Yes." 

"AAAAAAAHH!" he screamed, running away as fast as his little legs could carry him. 

"Wait! Don't you want me to help you find your way home?" Amelia called, chasing after him in vain. By the time she got through the bushes he had scrambled under, the cub was long out of sight. 

* * *

The next chimera Zelgadis spoke to could have passed for human at first glance, but only at first glance. A second glance would reveal golden, slit-pupiled eyes, pointed, tufted ears and joints that didn't bend in quite the way human joints did. He smiled menacingly at Zelgadis, revealing the pointed teeth and sharp fangs of a carnivore. 

"Stone, eh? I don't think I've ever seen anyone made of living stone before. Your creator must be quite an artist. Oops." He covered his mouth in a gesture of fake contrition. "I forgot that it's not polite to talk about creators." 

"I'm looking for a way to turn myself human again. Do you have any information that might help me?" 

"Why would you want to be human? Chimeras are so much more powerful. Look at me; I've got the strength of a bull, the sight of a hawk and the speed of a cat. I wouldn't give up my enhancements for a million gold. It cost me nearly that much to get them." 

"You _paid_ to become a chimera? You _want_ to be one?" 

"Sure." 

"You voluntarily gave up your humanity?" Zel's voice quivered with abhorrence. 

"Humanity's overrated, pal. The only thing I regret is that I didn't get the guy to make me part dragon. If I was part dragon, I could challenge any monster in the forest. As it is, I have dozens of weaklings cowering in terror of me. This is my idea of a just society. 

"Say," he continued, "you look about my strength. Want to test it in the ring?" 

Zelgadis stared at the monster in disgust. He knew that he should try to get more information from him, but he couldn't stand to be near him a moment longer. Zel turned his back and walked away. 

* * *

Amelia was doing quite well at slipping through the forest unobserved until she spotted a pack of wolfmen tormenting a pair of sheeplike creatures. 

She stepped into a beam of sunlight and struck a dramatic pose. "Picking on people smaller than you is the mark of a bully. I will have to level the scales." 

All the creatures attacked her, including the ones she was trying to save. "DIE, HUMAN!" they shouted with one voice. 

* * *

"I'm looking for information. Perhaps you can help me?" 

The beautiful woman sunning herself on a rock folded her wings and turned to look at Zelgadis, pinkish-red eyes narrowed in displeasure. 

"How dare you speak to Keika the Dragon Princess in such an impudent manner?" she roared. "Bow down before me, weakling!" 

"Now wait a minute!" 

He was cut off by her flame breath. 

"Freeze Arrow!" he retaliated. 

She dodged and swiped at him with her razor-sharp talons. They made an unpleasant screeching noise as they grazed his stone skin, but did no damage. 

"Digger Volt." A bolt of lightning shot from his hands into his opponent's body. 

She shook it off and flew upwards, blasting him with her breath attack again. 

"Dynast Brass!" 

She crashed to the ground. Zelgadis slipped away quickly before she could recover. 

* * *

"Flare Arrow!" Amelia finished off the last of the beastmen. She wiped a sleeve over her forehead with a sigh. Now she could start looking for Zelgadis again. 

A leonine man stepped out of the trees. "You defeated an entire pack of wolfmen by yourself? Impressive. Grab her!" 

Amelia saw a huge assortment of monsters enter the clearing from all sides as strong arms grabbed her from behind. 

"Hey, let me go! Flare..." 

Someone stuffed a gag in her mouth. The forest dwellers tied ropes around her wrists and ankles despite her kicking. She kept on struggling until she made the mistake of looking into a pair of hypnotic black eyes. She became very, very sleepy and the world faded away. 

When she woke up, she was wrapped in anti-magic chains and a green wolf was laughing at her. 

* * *

The sound of a bell rang through the trees. Zelgadis looked up in surprise, then decided to ignore it. 

A little boy with puppy dog eyes and ears ran past him. "C'mon! Aren't you going to Assembly? It's sure to be a lot of fun!" 

"Assembly?" 

"New here, huh? Follow me." 

The boy ran off. Intrigued, Zelgadis followed. 

They arrived at a large, wooden stadium which was rapidly filling up with monsters. "This is where we hold all our formal duels and group meetings," the boy explained importantly. "I hope it's a duel, not boring announcements. It must be something big for Ranu to summon us without any warning like this." 

"Ranu?" 

"Oh, there're some of my friends! See ya!" The boy scampered off to join a bunch of other young chimeras. 

Zel found his own way to an empty seat on a middle tier of the stadium. 

* * *

Zelgadis sighed with impatience. He had already decided that this place was useless and all of its inhabitants were people he wanted nothing to do with. Why had he come this stupid assembly? Then the monsters in front of him sat down and he saw the reason for the gathering. 

Three trolls stood on the edge of the stadium floor. The center one held Amelia in its arms. She was singed and bruised and wrapped from neck to knees in chains but she was still struggling. Zelgadis sighed again. He was not surprised to see Amelia here. Disgusted, yes. Surprised, no. 

As the last few monsters settled in their seats, a figure strode to the center of the stadium. Zel stiffened. The figure looked just like his old minion/enemy Dilgear. The associations were not pleasant. 

The troll-wolfman crossbreed bellowed, "Silence!" 

In the ensuing stillness Amelia could be heard shouting, "Let me go! I, the sorceress and princess Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun, will punish you for this!" 

The wolf-troll laughed so loudly and maliciously that he managed to silence Amelia, who stared at him wide-eyed. 

"Brothers and sisters, the wolf-troll called, "I, Ranu, your leader, have brought you a trespasser for your amusement. I was going to just let you kill her, but seeing as she's a _princess_," He laughed again. "I have a much more amusing idea." 

"Only someone evil like you," Amelia broke in, "would kill someone just for walking into your territory! I..." 

The troll holding her clamped a hand over her mouth. She tried to bite it. The troll didn't seem to notice but Amelia gagged at the taste. 

"Would you like to hear my idea?" Ranu continued. 

Laughs and hoots and roars of encouragement answered him. 

"There's a custom some far-off, foreign people somewhere have that when they condemn a man to die any woman of their tribe can save him by agreeing to marry him. So, gentlemen, anyone want a princess for a wife?" 

Above the troll's hand Amelia's eyes widened in horror. Lightning flickered over her chains as she attempted to cast a spell with neither words nor gestures and nearly succeeded. She moaned in pain and lay still. 

Behind Zelgadis one wolfman remarked to another, "She is kind of cute." 

"But who could put up with that ranting?" his friend replied. 

"She looks tender and juicy," a tentacled Thing murmured. 

"Princesssss," a small dragon hissed. 

A confused creature that was too strange to be anything other than a chimera just produced a monotonous, high-pitched laugh from its two throats. 

"Here are the conditions," Ranu called, having just made them up, "Whoever takes her must keep her. He cannot kill, eat or abandon her. We wouldn't want him to get out of it that easily! Of course, her husband is free to do anything else he wants to her." Ranu laughed his malicious laugh again, "Does everyone agree to these conditions?" 

Judging by the ensuing hoots, hisses, roars and shouts, the general consensus was approval. 

Zelgadis shook his head. This guy should be checked for mazoku blood; he took way too much pleasure in the thought of suffering. 

Amelia made another attempt at spell casting, this time almost causing the troll to drop her as the lightning crawled up his arm. 

This was intolerable. Zelgadis could not sit and watch any girl being treated like this, let alone Amelia. He ground his teeth and mentally prepared for battle. 

"Alright, we're agreed!" Ranu shouted, "So, who wants to be the lucky man? Anyone?" 

"What's the point in keeping a girl you can't eat?" the tentacled Thing muttered. The dragon hissed in agreement. 

"I still say she's cute," the first wolfman said to his friend, "but you're right. She would probably be more trouble than she's worth. Besides, what would the pack say?" 

Zelgadis stood up. Pretending to go along with this farce might get him close to Amelia. Being able to free her would be too much to ask, but he should at least be able to include her in his shield spell when the entire stadium attacked them. 

Amelia saw him. Her eyes lit up with a look of such intense gratitude and relief that Zelgadis had to look away. He didn't see the stars form in her eyes as she realized the full drama of their situation. Surrounded by monsters, the hero must choose between confessing his love or loosing the heroine forever. How romantic! Especially since she had disobeyed his orders by coming here. Actually, this was Zelgadis, so he was more likely planning a cunning ruse to foil the evil monster's plans and rescue the captive princess. Still, that was almost as good! 

The other marital candidates were a chimera with tiger stripes and bat wings, a fishman, an ogre with a missing arm, and a man who looked completely human but almost certainly wasn't. 

"What a fine bunch of creatures," Ranu laughed, "How will I ever decide which one to pick?" He paused a moment in thought. "I know! I'll let the bride decide. Fellows, put her down." 

The troll placed Amelia none-too-gently on her feet. She staggered under the weight of the chains but stood firm and tried to strike a pose. "Wolf-san, this is unforgivable. To turn the sacred institution of marriage into a joke like this and to force..." 

"Shut up and choose a husband or I'll choose for you, and you wouldn't like my choice," Ranu snapped. 

Amelia put aside her remonstrations for the moment. "I choose Zelgadis-san." 

"Who?" 

"The cool-looking chimera with stone skin." Amelia stared straight at her chosen fiancee, eyes shining with faith in him. 

Ranu considered for a moment but decided to accept her choice when he saw the wary expression on Zelgadis' face. "Alright...Zelgadis-san...Come here." 

Zelgadis pushed his way down the tiers to the floor of the stadium, blushing at the hoots and catcalls. He walked to Amelia's side and whispered, "Ready?" 

She nodded decisively. He started a spell incantation under his breath. 

Ranu raised his hands over their heads. "In the name of Beastmaster Zelas-Metellium, I pronounce you man and wife. Okay take her away. She's your problem now." 

"What?" Zel exclaimed, "That's it?" 

"Sure. We had the groom's agreement, the bride's agreement, and a blessing from a civic or religious official. It should be legally binding in most countries, including Seyruun," Ranu laughed so hard that he almost fell over. 

"But..." Zelgadis protested. 

"Zelgadis-san, would you..." Amelia began. 

Zel snapped out of his shock. "Right," he said, "let's get out of here." He slung Amelia over his shoulder and ran out of the monster-packed stadium into the forest with chimeric speed, Ranu's laughter following him. 

"Um, I was going to say, 'would you please get these chains off me?'" Amelia gasped, bouncing painfully on Zel's shoulder. 

Zelgadis stopped and helped her wiggle out of the chains. He tried to keep his voice level despite his anger, "That was really stupid, Amelia. I told you not to follow me. If you had followed my advice, none of this would have happened." 

"But, Zelgadis-san..." 

"Do you enjoy being captured, beaten-up and humiliated?" 

"No, but..." 

"But what?" 

"But what if they had attacked you?" 

"Some did. I handled it." 

"But what if there had been more than you could handle? I couldn't let you face danger alone." 

"The greatest danger I was in all day was when I had to rescue you. We would both be much better off if you had just stayed in town as I told you to." 

But she couldn't have let him go into such a dangerous place alone! On the other hand, if she had, he would still have been safe and she wouldn't have been captured. But she had been so sure that she was doing the right thing. Zelgadis often tried to do things on his own when he would be better off letting his friends help. But this time he had had a good reason. They wouldn't be in this awful situation now if she had stayed at the inn. But...but... 

"Was I wrong?" Amelia asked herself, not really believing it, but not quite disbelieving it either. 

"Yes," Zelgadis said. 

Amelia stared up at him with huge, watery eyes. "I'm sorry." 

That was the last thing Zelgadis expected her to say. The words, "I forgive you," stuck in his throat. "Let's go," he snapped instead. 

He scooped her up in his arms and started running again. Having humiliated them with that ridiculous fake marriage, the inhabitants of the forest probably wouldn't hurt them further, but it was better to be safe than sorry. 

Amelia wrapped one arm around her friend's neck for support and used the other hand to cast Recovery on herself. She felt like crying. This was nothing like the wedding she had dreamed about. 

* * *

**_Author's Note:_** The beastmen of Slayers really do get exploited. Just think of how many of them were slaughtered without mercy in the first season of Slayers. And I bet Rezo, Zangulus and Eris didn't even pay them much for it. Everywhere they go, they face hatred and prejudice based on their appearance. Well, those poor, mistreated people get their own home in this chapter, and see what a noble, just and tolerant society it is! They are an inspiration to us all. 

The "far-off, foreign people somewhere" Ranu mentions are actually the gypsies in Hunchback of Notre Dame but I didn't find that out until after I wrote this section. The idea also occurs in Babes in Toyland (book, not movie). I guess it's just out in the general culture. I wonder if the custom has ever been used by a real people. 


	7. Family Issues

**Chapter 7: Family Issues**

Zelgadis glanced up from his morning coffee as Amelia clattered down the stairs. She seemed slightly nervous but otherwise none the worse for yesterday's adventure. 

"Good morning," he said gravely. 

"Good morning, Zelgadis-sama," she returned cheerfully, sitting down across from him. 

The waitress brought her a plate of pancakes and a pitcher of syrup. They sat in silence while Amelia ate her breakfast and Zel sipped his coffee. 

At length Amelia asked, "What is the most powerful fire spell you know?" 

Zelgadis put his mug down and eyed her warily. "Why?" 

"It will take us all day to burn down the forest using only fireballs." 

"...burn down...the forest?" Zelgadis repeated blankly. "Amelia, we are not going to burn down the forest." 

"But, we can't let them get away with what they did to us! We must punish them with the full weight of Justice!" 

This was not a situation that Zelgadis had been prepared for. He wracked his brains for an argument that would make her see sanity. 

Amelia was puzzled by his silence. "Zelgadis-sama?" 

"But...what about...all the innocent people who live in the forest?" 

"What innocent people? They're all monsters who watched and _laughed_ as we were tormented. Those are the kind of people I call evil!" 

"Evil monsters," Zelgadis repeated. "Is that how you see me?" 

"No," Amelia replied quickly. There was something in her voice that was not quite right, a slight catch that reminded Zelgadis of the subtle nervousness that he had noticed earlier. Nevertheless, he couldn't doubt her sincerity. 

"Maybe some of the inhabitants weren't at the stadium that day," Zelgadis argued weakly. He realized how pathetic that sounded and pulled himself together. "Amelia, we cannot burn down an entire forest, especially one that's inhabited. If we caused that much destruction and death just because our feelings were hurt, _we_ would be the evil ones." 

"But, Zelgadis-sama..." 

"No. There are few enough places in this world where a chimera can feel accepted. I refuse to destroy this one." 

Amelia's eyes softened and filled with unshed tears. She clasped her hands under her chin. "What a noble speech! Of course I'll spare them if you feel that way." She thought guiltily of the little boy she'd met. She had completely forgotten him until now. "Thank you for preventing me from doing something so wrong!" 

"Uh, that's alright," Zelgadis said awkwardly. 

To his relief, Amelia returned to quietly eating, although she continued to glance up at him with shining, passionate eyes from time to time. 

As she dug her fork into her last pancake, Amelia asked with reassuring normality, "Are we still going to see that chimera maker, Diol, next? Did you find out anything more about him yesterday?" 

Zelgadis' lips tightened at the mention of yesterday, but he answered civilly, "Yes and yes. A few of the sentient chimeras and most of the non-sentient ones I saw yesterday were his work. He isn't as good as Eris was. He isn't even as good as Demia, that sorcerer we worked for briefly in Atlas City." 

"I remember." Amelia frowned at the memories Eris' and Demia's names called up. 

"Diol's chimeras look like they were glued together out of spare parts. I hope he will be helpful. Even if his chimeras aren't very well constructed, he certainly has made a lot of them." 

Amelia wiped up the last drops of syrup with her last fragment of pancake and stuffed it into her mouth. 

"Are you ready to go?" Zel asked. 

"I just have to wash my hands. Wait here, Zelgadis-sama." 

Zelgadis nodded and looked around for the innkeeper so he could pay the bill. 

Wait. Did she say "Zelgadis-_sama_"? 

* * *

Once they were safely out of town and away from prying ears and gossiping tongues, he confronted her. "Did you call me 'Zelgadis-sama' back at the inn?" 

"Yes." 

"Why?" 

"Well, we are married now so..." 

Zel tried to be cool and logical despite the blood burning in his cheeks. "We are not married! That thing yesterday was obviously meaningless. Don't you see that?" 

"No." 

Amelia had spent hours last night trying to figure out what the course of justice was in this situation. Was she married to Zelgadis or not? If so, what should she do about it? If not, what should she do about it? She had spent half the night pacing but she still hadn't come to any conclusions. Uncertainty -- a rare emotion for her -- worried her deeply. 

She spoke earnestly, "I've been thinking about it a lot and I think Wolf-san was right. It did have all the important elements of a wedding. You agreed, I agreed and Wolf-san pronounced us married. There was even a speech on the duties of marriage, sort of." 

"When did I agree?" 

"When you stood up after Wolf-san asked who wanted to marry me. I agreed by choosing you." 

"That wasn't a wedding. It was just a sick joke. A troll held your chained body and a half-breed wolfman mocked you. Do you call that a wedding?" 

Amelia did not look convinced. Obviously he would have no peace until he talked her out of this foolish idea. 

"Let's look at this logically. The heart of a wedding is the vows that the bride and groom swear to love, honor and protect each other. We didn't swear any such vows." 

"As part of a princess' education, I studied the laws and customs of other countries, including marriage laws and customs. In many places the bride and groom have to swear oaths, but in other places they just listen to what is expected of them and agree to follow it. You agreed not to kill, eat or abandon me." 

"But what about the hand-binding at the end?" 

"Or the kiss or shared cup or other symbolic joining?" Amelia confirmed. "You come from somewhere where they bind hands? Where?" 

Zelgadis was silent. 

Amelia considered his question. "Well, you threw me over your shoulder and ran off at the end. That's the way weddings end in one of the northern countries, I think. Symbolically anyway." 

Zelgadis glared at the ground in thought. She had to be wrong. The 'wedding' had just been a brief amusement for a pack of monsters. The whole thing took less than five minutes. Ranu had made up the rules on the spot. 

On the other hand, if someone other than Zelgadis had taken her, that mock-ceremony would have given him some sort of ownership of Amelia that the other monsters would probably have respected. 

No, it couldn't mean anything! Zelgadis had had no intention of marrying Amelia. He had just been pretending to go along with it in order to save her from death or worse. He said as much. 

"I thought about that too," Amelia replied, her brow wrinkling. "I know that contracts made 'under duress' aren't supposed to be valid -- it's unjust to force people to honour a deal that they made because their lives were threatened -- but I also know girls who only married the men they did because their fathers would have disowned them otherwise. Without money or support they would probably have suffered 'fates worse than death'." She didn't know what such a fate would consist of but that was the way the court ladies had described it. "My daddy prevents that from happening whenever he finds out about it, but when he doesn't find out in time -- even my Daddy can't catch everything -- the marriages seem to be valid anyway. Some of the girls are even mothers now. I really don't know what the law is about that. I wish I did." 

Zelgadis thought hard. When the solution came to him, it was so obvious that he couldn't believe he hadn't thought of it sooner. 

"The only people who know about that farce yesterday are a forestful of monsters and us. I doubt the monsters will ever leave that forest, judging by the ones I talked to, so if we don't tell anyone, then in effect it never happened." He smiled in satisfaction. 

"I can not accept that." Amelia stopped walking and looked her companion in the eye. "That 'marriage' yesterday was unjust and probably incomplete, but until I am certain that I am not married to you I cannot marry anyone else." 

"Why not? I wouldn't protest and no one else would know!" 

"It would be wrong, Zelgadis-san, and a wrong thing is still wrong even if no one else knows about it." 

They glared at each other and started walking again, hostility crackling between them. 

"Fine, don't get married then." 

"But I have to! Now that my sister is missing and my cousin is dead I'm the only member of my generation left. If I don't have children who can inherit the throne there will be a war of succession among all my distant cousins. Hundreds of people would die. I will not allow that to happen and, if you are the righteous person I believe you to be, neither will you." 

Zelgadis considered pointing out that marriage was not a necessary precondition of parenthood, but immediately thought better of it. "I really don't see what you are so upset about. Just decide that we are not married and the whole problem is solved." 

Amelia screamed in frustration and ran off. 

Zelgadis grumbled under his breath about idiot princesses, moral scruples and life in general. 

* * *

By the time Zelgadis caught up with Amelia more than an hour later, both their tempers had cooled. The blasted and charred bushes along both sides of the road might have had something to do with that. Amelia had picked up stress relief techniques from Lina. Zelgadis was deeply amused at such a childish display of temper. 

Amelia was sitting on a grassy bank beside the road. Zelgadis sat down beside her. 

"Would you like a sandwich?" she offered. 

"Thank you," he replied. 

It was the closest they would come to apologizing. 

"Where will we be sleeping tonight, in a town or in the woods?" 

Zelgadis pulled out the map. "We should reach a town called Littleton tonight." The name sounded somehow familiar but he couldn't place it. It was probably just a common name. "Then we should reach the chimera maker a day or two after that." 

* * *

Littleton looked exactly like every other small town they had passed through, except for one thing. Right in the middle of the town square stood the largest statue of Rezo the Red Priest either had ever seen (and that was saying something). Strangely, the statue wore very simple robes and carried a plain staff without any rings, although in every other respect it looked exactly like Rezo. 

Zelgadis was used to the world treating the man who had destroyed his life as a hero. He just gave the statue a long, disgusted look before walking into the inn. 

After arranging for dinner and rooms for himself and Amelia, he seated himself in a shadowy corner with his back to the fire so his face would be in shadow. Amelia sat in the light across from him. An old man wandered over from another table and seated himself next to Amelia. "Hello, strangers," he said. 

"Hello," Amelia replied, "Could you tell me, sir, why this town has such a large statue of Rezo?" 

"Ah, you recognize our local hero!" the old man responded with delight. 

"All the world has heard of Rezo the Red Priest," Amelia said politely, carefully not looking at Zelgadis. 

"Yes, just think of it. One of the five great sages, and possibly the greatest of all five, was born in this very town." 

Zelgadis was startled into speech, "Rezo was born here?" 

"Yes, he was. And he grew up here too and married here," the old man chortled, "I didn't know him too well since he was more my father's generation than mine, but I saw him many a time. He fixed this right leg of mine after I broke it falling out of an apple tree. I never saw a better healer, or a gentler man. He had a soft voice like your friend there and a wonderful smile." 

"Why did Rezo live here?" Amelia asked. 

"Oh, his family had been here for generations. Not as long as some families in the region, mind you. I get the feeling that family moves around a fair bit. They were an odd bunch, and powerful. But I was talking about Rezo. I could tell you more about him if you have the patience to listen." 

Amelia risked a glance at Zelgadis. His expression was unreadable but he didn't seem about to explode. 

"Yes, please tell me about what Rezo was like when he was young," Amelia requested cutely. 

The old man didn't need any more encouragement. "Rezo was born in a house just on the other side of this square. The house is still there if you want to look at it tomorrow. No one has lived in it since Rezo left more than fifty years ago. We keep it preserved for tourists, but tourists don't seem to know about this place." He sighed. 

"As I was saying, Rezo was born here in town and Mina was born in the house next door around the same time. You have to know about Mina if you want to understand Rezo. The two were inseparable from infancy. As you probably know, Rezo was blind from birth. That meant that he couldn't play most of the games the other children played. Instead, he played with Mina. Mina didn't care that he was blind, or rather she accepted it as a part of him like the colour of his hair or the sound of his voice. She considered guiding Rezo's steps and telling him about the things around them a natural part of her life. 

"Rezo, on the other hand, cared very much that he was blind. As soon as he was old enough to realize that other people could sense things he couldn't, he devoted his life to searching for a cure." 

Amelia glanced at Zelgadis. His expression was stony. 

"Rezo and Mina started studying white magic at a very early age. Her mother was a healer and his family...well, as I said, they were odd folk. It isn't easy to learn magic when you can't read spellbooks or see the diagrams you're drawing, but with Mina's help Rezo did it. My mother told me that when she was a child the other children used to go to Mina and Rezo for healing because even then they were better healers than Mina's mother, and they didn't tell parents. 

"They can't have been more than ten years old when they started touring the nearby villages seeking out people to heal. They cured everything from sprained fingers to broken bones to curses to life-threatening illnesses. There was one man I knew who had been crippled for years because of a broken leg that had healed crooked. After they healed him it was as if it had never been broken. He told me that they were just like two little angels of mercy. 

"Their real focus, though, was blindness. They cured near-sightedness, far-sightedness, cataracts and all those other sight problems. They were twelve, I think, when they first cured someone who was completely blind. They held a big celebration in honor of that event, I can tell you. 

"They entered the priesthood together at the age of fourteen. It was the logical next step for them. It offered them more white magic spells and more opportunities to practice healing. 

"After that they spent more time on the road than they did at home. They would be gone for weeks at a time and return for only a few days. They became a legend throughout the kingdom: the blind priest and the gentle priestess, both little more than children, whose touch brought miraculous cures. When they were at their peak I don't believe there was a blind person in the kingdom, other then Rezo himself. You see, his blindness was the one sort they couldn't cure. Most blindness is the result of some problem with the eyeball but Rezo's wasn't like that. He couldn't open his eyes at all. The eyelids were sealed together or something. Strange, eh?" 

Amelia nodded. 

The old man resumed his story, "Rezo and Mina got married of course, although not as soon as you'd think. I suspect that Rezo was waiting until he was cured to propose but Mina got tired of waiting, and matters took their course. Anyway, they were married here in a field just outside of town. People came from all over the kingdom to see it. They had touched a lot of lives. 

"Their son was born two years later. They adored him and took him with them everywhere they went. They were still travelling and healing of course. The little boy, by the way, had perfect vision." 

"What was his name?" Zelgadis asked with more intensity than such a simple question seemed to merit. 

"Ursus. Why?" 

"That answers a question I've been wondering about for years." Zelgadis sounded thoughtful and very satisfied. 

The old man wondered why the young man would spend years wondering about the name of Rezo's son, but he shrugged it off and continued. "There isn't too much to tell about the next several years. Rezo and Mina traveled far and wide and their reputations grew apace with their son. Having learned pretty much everything they could from white magic without finding a cure for Rezo's blindness, they started studying shamanism. They probably knew some before, what with all that travelling alone along dangerous roads, but this would be when they started _studying_ it. Those were also the years of my childhood. They were good years. 

"Then, while trying to stop a minor plague, Mina caught the illness herself and died. Her last words were, 'I'm glad I'll never have to live without you. Take care of our son.' Rezo was shattered, as you can imagine. He and Ursus returned to this village and for more than a year Rezo traveled no further than the next village over. He rarely even left his house. 

"Ursus was an active, impatient boy of thirteen who had developed a wanderlust from all his years on the road. He rebelled against being his father's eyes, as his mother never had. He rebelled against being stuck in one small town. He rebelled against everything about his new life. In the end, he ran away from home. I didn't really like him since he was bad tempered and he hated the town I love, but I pitied him. I was only a child then but I could see that he didn't belong here. 

"Then Rezo was entirely alone. The women of the village spoke about him in pitying whispers and made sure he got food and clean clothes. All of us kids were slightly awestruck at having such a figure of tragedy in our village. 

"Then one day he was gone, along with a wagon (which he left payment for) and most of his clothes, books and other personal possessions. I never saw him again. 

"After a few years, rumours of him started trickling back to us. He was healing again. Some rumours said that he had learned to see without eyes. Some said that he now knew black magic as well as white and shamanism. Some said even more amazing things, which were probably false. Eventually the rumours started speaking of him as one of the five great wisemen of our age. I haven't heard anything new about him in a dozen years, so he may be dead now, despite all those rumours of eternal youth. That's all I know." 

Amelia was weeping openly. "What a sad story!" she bawled. 

Zelgadis gave her a disgusted look although privately he was deeply moved too. It really was a sad story, despite the old man's heavy-handed attempt at pathos. "Do you know what happened to Ursus?" he asked. 

"No, I don't. If I had to guess I'd say that he headed south toward Sairaag and Atlas City. He always used to say that life was more exciting down there." 

Zelgadis unconsciously nodded. That confirmed his suspicions. 

"Are there any of Rezo's relatives left in this town?" Amelia asked. Wouldn't it be exciting if Zelgadis discovered long-lost cousins! 

"No, there are no Greywords left here. That was Rezo's family name, Greywords. Most people don't know that because he just called himself 'Rezo the Red Priest'." 

"What do you know about the Greywords family?" Zelgadis asked. 

"Well, like I said earlier, they were odd folks, magical types mostly, and powerful with it. Rezo's father was peaceful enough, but you hear some odd stories about his grandfather. I heard tell that the family name comes from their unusual tendency to be very good at both black and white magic. Mix white and black spells and you get grey words, see?" 

Zelgadis nodded. He had heard that too. 

"Rezo was one of the good ones," (Amelia and Zelgadis chose not to correct him), "but the Greywords family produced its share of evil sorcerers too." 

"More great black mages than any other ten families combined," Zelgadis muttered. Amelia gave him a funny look. 

"You've heard of them?" the Littletonian inquired in surprise. 

"...yes, I know a few things about them," Zelgadis admitted. 

"Ursus always claimed that they were descended from Lei Magnus, the man who had Shabranigdo resurrected inside his body during the Mazoku war a thousand years ago." 

"And the creator of the Dragon Slave, the highest spell in black magic. Yes, I would say the Greywords family is definitely descended from him, and possibly from Shabranigdo himself," Zelgadis agreed, "In any case, the family definitely has tainted blood." 

"Don't be too hard on them. There have been a lot of good Greywords mages too. Actually, I don't think they tend to fit the classic model of black or white mages. Don't they tend to be more morally ambiguous?" 

Zelgadis considered that. "Yes, they tend to be the sort of people who use evil methods to achieve good ends and good methods to achieve evil ends. They are heroes who almost destroy the world or tyrants who free hundreds of people from slavery, healers who deform people in their experiments and black mages who teach demons how to love. They are the sort of people who would use a Mazoku as a librarian, or enter a black dragon in a pet show. They tend to be highly intelligent, dangerously powerful mages or warlords with obsessive personalities and a strong, twisted sense of humour." 

The other two blinked at him in shock. Zelgadis sipped his wine. 

"I hadn't heard that much," the old man muttered. 

"Zelgadis-sama, you say that about your own family?" Amelia protested. 

"What? 'Your own family'?" the old man repeated. 

"Yes, my name is Zelgadis Greywords," Zel confessed grumpily. 

"This is amazing! I'll have to take you to see Rezo's house as soon as it's light enough to see tomorrow! Are you closely related to the Red Priest?" 

"Rezo was his grandfather," Amelia explained excitedly. 

"Great-grandfather," Zelgadis corrected coolly, "This Ursus must have been my grandfather." 

"This is amazing!" the Littletonian repeated. He would have hugged Zelgadis but the young man left the table before he could be touched. "Excuse me," he said, heading for his room. 

"See you tomorrow and thank you for the story," Amelia called, flashing the old man a smile before she hurried after Zelgadis. 

"She even looks a bit like Mina," the old man murmured to himself. 

* * *

Amelia reached the first bedroom door right on Zelgadis' heels. To her surprise, he didn't shut the door in her face. Instead he offered, "Come in. Let's talk." 

She knew that it wasn't strictly proper for her to be alone with a man in his bedroom, but she was long past worrying about that. 

"What do you want to talk about?" she asked. 

"First, is there anything you want to talk to me about?" 

"Not really." She tried to decipher the impulse that had prompted her to follow him. "I just didn't want to leave you alone after so many revelations. As Lina-san would say, you tend to brood about things." 

Zel ignored that last comment. "There _is_ something I want to say to you. I was trying to tell you out there but I think I need to say it more bluntly." 

"What's that?" Amelia asked nervously. 

"You don't want to be part of my family, Amelia. Rezo was a good person once if half of what that man said is true, but he was still evil enough to turn me into a chimera and unleash Shabranigdo upon the world and...other things he did while I was working for him which you don't need to know about. My father is extremely eccentric, if not downright insane, too. My family really are all knowledge-obsessed black and white sorcerers of questionable sanity and even more questionable morality. Rezo isn't the only Greywords to make it into the history books with his family name hidden by a descriptor like 'the Great', 'the Terrible' or 'the Red Priest'. 

"I always tried to avoid family tendencies. I trained to be primarily a swordsman and secondarily a shamanist. I don't use black magic unless I'm facing an enemy I can't defeat with shamanism alone. I don't use white magic beyond basic Recovery spells. I still fall into family traps. I wouldn't be a chimera now if I hadn't." 

"Why are you telling me this? You never talk about your family." 

"Because...because of the discussion we had this morning." Zelgadis turned away from her to hide his embarrassment. "Somehow I feel you need to know." 

Amelia nodded bravely, "Go on." 

"There's something else I found out last year while I was going through Rezo's papers. My family bonds extremely well with demons. That's not because we are all evil, but because there is something about our bloodline that makes it easier for demons to live in our bodies than in most other people's." Zelgadis clenched his fists. "That's why Rezo used me to test his chimera spell. That's why Kopii Rezo merged so quickly and perfectly with the Demon Beast Zanaffar. That's why Shabranigdo chose Rezo's eyes to possess. Rezo wasn't the first person to be born with his eyes sealed shut. He was just the first to open them. The others were probably all my direct ancestors too. I'm not entirely sure why, but ever since Lei Magnus' time, and probably centuries earlier, my family has attracted pieces of Shabranigdo the way Lina attracts Mazoku. 

"Amelia," he concluded, "you do not want to marry me. Even if I was human, my blood is tainted. You love your family. Don't do that to them." 

"It doesn't matter whether I _want_ to marry you. The question is whether I _am_ married to you." 

Zelgadis snorted softly. He had noticed that what Amelia wanted to do had a huge impact on her definition of 'the path of Justice'. 

"Besides, Zelgadis-sama," Amelia continued, "my family is already a lot like yours. We are very magically talented. We're all supposed to be white mages but, actually, my family has produced a lot of...people who were tempted away from the path of virtue...black mages...too." It was very painful for her to talk about this but she couldn't be less honest than Zelgadis had been. "You know that my Uncle Randy tried to assassinate Daddy." She paused at the memory, then forced herself to go on, "but what you may not know is that he did it by summoning monsters. They weren't strong enough to hurt my Daddy -- Uncle Randy always was kind of incompetent -- but summoning monsters is powerful black magic." She drew a deep breath, "I suspect my sister may have become a black sorceress too. I'm not sure, but I think that's what she was hinting at before she left. And you know about my Cousin Alfred. 

"The way to deal with families like ours is not to refuse to marry anyone from a family that has produced evil sorcerers. It is to follow an absolute standard of Justice! We must teach our children to use their powers only for good!" Amelia leapt onto the footboard of the bed, a pointing finger thrust up towards the ceiling. "With determination and perseverance we can overcome all innate evil tendencies in our families! There is no power, not even black magic, that cannot be a force of good when it is used to promote Justice!" 

"That didn't work in your family," Zelgadis remarked. 

Amelia fell off the footboard and landed face first on the floor. She picked herself up with tears in her eyes. "How can you say that?" 

"Because it's true." Zelgadis tried not to feel bad about hurting her feelings. The facts of the situation were obvious. "Lectures about justice didn't stop your uncle, sister or cousin from going bad. You're just lucky that the bad members of your family have all been incompetent." 

Amelia turned her back on him. "I'll be in my room if you want to talk to me about anything else," she said stiffly. Zel's sensitive ears detected her mumble, "Not all of them," just before she left. 

Zelgadis sighed and started pulling off his boots. Why did Amelia always have to make things so difficult? 

That night he dreamed about Rezo. 

* * *

When Zelgadis wandered into the common room the next morning, everything but one eye and a thick lock of hair completely concealed by the folds of his cloak, Amelia was already finishing her breakfast and chatting with the old man from last night. The old man scrambled to his feet. 

"Greywords-san!" The man clasped Zelgadis' hand before Zel could react. "Now that you're awake you must come meet everyone." 

"Everyone?" Zelgadis repeated blankly. 

Amelia pressed a mug of coffee into his hands and yanked the covering off the lower half of his face. After a few sips, Zel felt slightly better prepared to deal with the morning. 

"Yes," Amelia enthused, "the whole town came to meet you. Isn't it exciting?" 

'Exciting' was not the word. 

"Come on!" Amelia and the old man dragged Zelgadis, still clutching his coffee, out the door. 

Three dozen curious eyes arranged in a ring around the door stared at Zelgadis. He stared back. 

"This is Zel-di-gas Greywords, great-grandson of our illustrious Rezo!" the old man announced, gesturing dramatically at the statue. 

"That's Zel_ga_dis," the owner of the name corrected irritably. 

"What's wrong with him, Mommy?" a small child asked anxiously. 

"Hush, dear," the mother replied. 

Zelgadis' cheeks reddened. 

"Greywords will always be welcome here," said a grey-haired woman, keeping to the script. 

"I'm a chimera." They stared at him in confusion. "That's what's wrong with me; I'm a chimera. See?" He threw back his hood. They recoiled. "Your precious Rezo did this to me." 

Zelgadis stormed forward. Villagers jumped out of his way. 

"Zelgadis-sama, wait!" Amelia cried. 

"Will you stop calling me that!" 

Tears trembled in Amelia's eyes. "I'm sorry, Zelgadis-s...san, but don't you want to see Rezo's house? There might be something there that would help you find your cure." 

Zelgadis hated it when Amelia cried, especially when he was the cause. He felt like he had just kicked a puppy. 

"Alright, where's the house?" he asked the old man brusquely. 

The old man pulled himself together. "F-follow me." He led Zelgadis and Amelia to a house on the far side of the square. 

As he stepped up onto the porch, Zel realized that he still held a coffee cup in one hand. He gulped down the contents and left the empty cup on the porch railing. 

Inside, the house was dark and dusty. Zelgadis silently wandered through the rooms with Amelia and the old man following nervously behind. The house was still fully furnished down to the doilies on the chair backs, but an air of disuse and despair hung over it. 

"Some woman loved this house very much," Amelia murmured, tracing the floral design embroidered on one of the cushions and glancing at the faded curtains. 

"Mina made that," the old man explained hesitantly, "She was very good with a needle, whether for surgery or embroidery. She used to joke that if she ever ruined her eyesight doing such fine stitching, her husband could always fix it for her. The women of the village fixed up this place with all these womanly touches after Rezo left. Mina kept it like this, but it was much barer when only Rezo and Ursus lived here." 

Zelgadis searched all the cupboards and drawers but all the papers and spell books were gone. He found a few books of poetry and a dusty pair of flutes, but those were of no use to him. 

"Look here," the old man called. 

The other two hurried over. It was a painting. In it a tall, burgundy-haired man and a smiling, black-haired woman sat on a bench with a small, bright-eyed boy between them. Both the parents wore simple, red, priestly robes. 

"So Rezo really did look like that. I always wondered whether he improved himself a little when he used that anti-aging spell," Zelgadis remarked. Despite his words, the picture had touched him deeply. 

"And this is your great-grandmother," Amelia sighed, "Does she look like you...did?" 

Zelgadis studied the sweet face. "A little," he admitted. 

Amelia smiled in response to the painted smile. "I like her. She looks like a very nice person." 

Zelgadis silently agreed. He gazed at the picture. The family looked so happy. There was no hint of the loss and destruction that lay in their future, except for the father's closed eyes. They also looked very young. There was a sincere warmth and happiness in this Rezo's face that Zelgadis had never seen in the embittered and ruthless hypocrite he had known. Maybe the Rezo the world admired had once existed. If so, how far he had fallen! 

Finally, Zelgadis turned away from the portrait. "Let's go, or we won't reach the next town before dark." 

* * *

**_Author's Note:_** Chapters like this one are the real reason why I have author's notes at the end of each chapter. I hate it when I read some plausible background detail that a fanfic author made up and believe that it's cannon. On the other hand, if it is genuine I'd like to know about it. Therefore, every time I make up a huge amount of backstory, I'll tell you where it came from. 

I made up Rezo's background here from whole cloth. For all I know, he grew up in the slums of Seyruun or is the scion of an aristocratic family affiliated with the Sairaag Sorcerer's Guild. For all I know, Zel's parent/grandparent may have been the product of a brief affair with a grateful village girl Rezo cured, or of a one night stand with a maternally-inclined black sorceress. I gave Rezo a small-town-in-the-middle-of-nowhere origin because it seemed likely to me and fit the story. I put Mina in for the sake of shameless, tear-jerking romance -- in other words, because I felt like it. 

I do have some support for the family tree I made up to connect Rezo and Zel. I once saw a quote from an interview with Mr. Kanzaka, the author of Slayers, which went something like this. "The exact relationship between Rezo and Zelgadis? Grandfather. No, great-uncle. Second cousin thrice removed. Great-grandfather. Yeah, great-grandfather." In other words, great-grandfather is the most official version, but feel free to use whatever works for you. However, the whole incest thing is just a dirty rumor. Zel's line which is sometimes mistranslated as, "He's both my grandfather and my great-grandfather" should be "He's **either** my grandfather **or** my great-grandfather," which implies something quite different about their relationship (more on that later). In another quoted interview, Mr. Kanzaka mentioned that Rezo's last name was Greywords. That implies an all-male line of descent, so that's what I made it. Besides, it's much more fun to talk about an insanely powerful Greywords family stretching back centuries than to assume Zel got the name from the other side of his family. I have no evidence for them being descended from Lei Magnus, but it's the best (meaning most dramatic potential) explanation I could come up with for why Rezo ended up with Shabranigdo in his eyes. Let me know how you like my version of history. 

(You can find the quoted interviews at http://isweb13.infoseek.co.jp/play/qpdiana/Q&A/others.html ) 

This author's note is getting very long, but I just have to say thank you to all the people who have reviewed this story so far. Your reviews made me dance around my room with joy. I will try to take your suggestions into consideration in future chapters. 


	8. Chimeric Madness

**Chapter 8: Chimeric Madness**

"Amelia, how can you still believe that justice always triumphs in the end? You've been out of Seyruun long enough that you should know that good people suffer and die just as often as bad people." 

"Even if good people sometimes die, even if bad guys sometimes seem to succeed, Justice always does triumph in the end!" 

Zelgadis and Amelia were walking down a long, dusty road with monotonous fields stretching out on either side. Neither one could remember exactly how this argument had started but its real cause was boredom. 

"How can you still believe that?" 

"Zelgadis-sam...san, look at the facts. All the greatest villains we have fought -- Kopii Rezo, Seygram, Kanzel and Mazenda, Gaav, Phibrizzo, Valgaav, Dark Star, and the rest -- were much, much more powerful than we were. We won because we had justice on our side! That's the only reasonable explanation." 

"We had Lina's Giga Slave and Gourry's Sword of Light as well as your and my shamanism. We weren't exactly helpless." 

Amelia gave him a withering glance. "Most of them could have killed us as easily as you would squash a bug. What stopped them from doing that if not the power of justice?" 

"Over confidence." 

Amelia's expression said "Yes, and...?" 

"We were very lucky. I still can't believe that we survived some of those fights. But we may not always be that lucky. Don't count on justice alone to protect you." 

"Of course not! You also need a steadfast heart and unceasing vigilance. You must use any weapon and any true ally you can find in the fight against evil! You can always win if you stay on the side of justice, but only if you train hard and always fight with your whole heart! You can never take victory for granted." 

Zelgadis stared at her in surprise. "I...actually agree with most of that." Amelia's face lit up with satisfaction. "...but only the part about hard work. If justice always triumphs in the end, how do you explain..." 

"Chimera Alert! Chimera Alert!" screamed a hitherto unnoticed farmer working in the field next to them. 

Before Zelgadis and Amelia had time to do anything more than look around in surprise, they were surrounded by townspeople armed with pitchforks, spears and a mixture of other makeshift or professional weapons. 

"Watch out. It looks like a tough one." 

"Ugly too." 

"Hey!" Zelgadis protested. 

"What do you suppose Diol made it out of?" 

"I don't know and I don't care. Let's just get rid of it before it wrecks the town again." 

"Don't you touch him!" Amelia threw herself protectively in front of the chimera (rather futilely since they were surrounded on all sides). 

One of the village women spared her just enough attention to say, "I'm sorry, little girl, but we have to kill your pet. It's dangerous." 

"He is not my pet!" 

"Good, then you won't mind if we..." 

"He's my _friend_!" Amelia took a deep breath. "You who judge a person by his appearance without giving him a chance to walk among you peacefully..." 

Zelgadis gently shoved her out of his way and drew his sword. "Let me deal with this." 

"No! Zelgadis-sama, don't attack them! They haven't proven themselves to be evil yet!" 

Everyone ignored her. 

One particularly aggressive-looking townsman strode up to Zelgadis. "Monster, you seem to be capable of speech so I'll try to talk to you, but if you make any threatening move we'll kill you. Understand?" 

Zelgadis lowered his sword but did not resheathe it. 

"This treatment is completely unjust! How dare you..." 

"Our town has been destroyed by chimeras like you more times than we can count. We won't stand for it anymore. Leave now. We don't care where you go as long as it isn't here." 

"...exclude people just because they're different?" 

Zelgadis placed a hand on Amelia's shoulder to silence her. "I am a peaceful traveler," he said through clenched teeth. "I came here to consult with the chimera maker Diol." 

"See, that's shows he's up to no good!" an old man exclaimed. 

Zelgadis tried to keep his temper. "I'll leave tomorrow. I just need somewhere to stay for the night." 

There were shouts of rage from the crowd. The spokesman summarized, "We don't trust chimeras. They all lie." 

"You who judge without knowing..." Amelia began. 

"Get out now, you ugly freak," the spokesman concluded. 

Amelia stopped in mid-sentence. Her eyes narrowed. Her fingers flexed. "Apologize _now_, or I will turn you into a frog." 

"Turn me into a frog?" the town spokesman laughed, acknowledging her presence for the first time. "Do you even know anything about magic, little girl? Sorcerers can't turnnaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhrribbit." 

"Let that be a lesson to you." Amelia dusted her hands off smugly. Then she looked around with an expression of pure menace. "Is anyone else going to insult Zelgadis-sama?" 

There was a general silence. Even Zelgadis looked stunned. 

"Good," Amelia said. "As allies of justice, we will not harm you unless you show yourselves to be evil. No one who follows the path of justice and _politeness_ has anything to fear from us. Now, may we enter the town?" 

"You can always attack us again later," Zelgadis added wryly. 

The townspeople did not protest. 

Amelia gave them all a sunny smile and restored her victim to humanity. 

The townspeople melted away with many frightened backward glances, murmuring to each other fatalistically. 

"Amelia, since when can you turn people into frogs? The last I knew you could only turn flowers into other flowers." 

"I've been practicing." On you, she did not add. 

"Yes, but..." It had taken Zelgadis three months to fully master that spell. He was suddenly very glad that the only transformation spell he had taught her tended to wear off after a few hours. 

"Zelgadis-sa...san," Amelia looked up at her companion seriously. "No matter what that man said, you are not a freak. You behaved with more humanity than any of them." 

Zelgadis walked away without answering. After a moment, Amelia followed him. 

* * *

While Amelia arranged for rooms at the local inn, Zelgadis very patiently and politely asked around about the chimera maker's location. Now that he was inside the town, the villagers made no move to attack him. They just hid inside their houses. The only person who would actually talk to him was a little girl. 

"He lives up there." The child pointed toward the small mountain that loomed over the town. "It's real far. You can't make it before sunset." She stuck a finger in her mouth and looked Zelgadis over appraisingly. "Are you really a chimera?" 

"Yes." 

"You don't look like the other chimeras. You're the same all over. And you're smart." 

"The man who turned me into a chimera was not Diol." 

The child nodded wisely. 

Then the girl's mother noticed what her daughter was doing and instantly whisked her away. 

* * *

Zelgadis felt his shoulders begin to unclench as he followed Amelia up the stairs to the inn's bedrooms. The villagers had not attacked them again but their frightened stares wore on his nerves more than a straightforward attack would have. He was beginning to wish that he had just camped out in the woods. 

"Which room is mine?" he asked with a yawn. 

"This one." Amelia opened the door, sat down on one of the two beds, and began pulling off her boots. 

"We have to share a room?" 

"Yes." 

"Why? They wouldn't let the beast out of its keeper's sight?" 

"No, I asked for only one room." 

Zelgadis' wariness level increased tenfold. "Would this have anything to do with that incident in the Chimera Forest?" 

"You've been having nightmares ever since then. I hear you crying in your sleep. Zelgadis-sam...san, as you friend I cannot tolerate being kept away from you by a locked door when you need my help. Tonight I am going to stay right here and guard you from bad dreams, just like my Daddy used to do for me." 

"He used to guard you from bad dreams?" Zelgadis suppressed a smile at that childish admission. 

"After my Mommy...died, I had a lot of nightmares. My daddy used to sleep next to my bed so that if I had a bad dream, he could chase it away. It really worked, and after awhile the nightmares went away completely. So I'll do that for you tonight, okay?" 

When had Amelia's mother died? Zelgadis wracked his memory. The answer, when it came to him, made his blood run cold. The crown princess of Seyruun had been murdered. Zel's father had heard about it in a letter from a friend and he had told the rest of the family at dinner one night. They all shook their heads in disgust at how bloody Seyruun politics were and then thought little more about it. There was one other detail, which Zelgadis remembered his mother exclaiming over. The young princesses had been the ones to find their mother's body. He had known those facts in the back of his mind for years, but he had never connected them with Amelia before. No wonder she had had nightmares! 

"Do whatever you want." Zelgadis started pulling off his own boots. 

* * *

In Zelgadis' dream, he was back in his home village shopping for the items his mother had sent him to get. The shopkeeper smiled at him as he picked out some tomatoes. A boy ran into the shop. Was it the puppy boy from the monster forest? No, it was that boy in the portrait, Ursus. 

"Look, Mom, they have apples!" he called. 

Two more people entered the shop: Rezo and, holding his hand, a smiling, black-haired woman, Mina. The shopkeeper, who was now the grey-haired Littletonian woman, said, "Greywords are always welcome here." 

Rezo turned toward Zelgadis, his blind eyes seeking him out unerringly. "Zelgadis," he said in the soft, cool tone in which he had always spoken his great-grandson's name. He raised his staff, which now had rings, and suddenly Zelgadis was in his chimeric transformation nightmare again. It was so familiar that he barely even moaned in his sleep as remembered pain ripped through his body. 

The aftermath was worse. The villagers of Littleton stared in shock and horror as sunlight revealed his face. The townspeople of this afternoon shouted their loathing. A stable boy shook a pitchfork in his face. A child cowered behind his equally frightened mother. The faces of all the strangers who had ever reacted to his appearance with fear and hatred confronted him. Then it got worse. The faces became those of the people he loved. "Who are you? _What_ are you?" cried his mother. "Get away from me, monster," his brother growled. 

"No, no! It's me, Mother!" Zelgadis wept. 

Amelia threw her arms around Zel. "Shh, it's alright. Shh. What's wrong, Zelgadis-sama?" 

Still asleep, Zelgadis answered her, "I'm a freak. Everybody hates me." He moaned again. 

"No, you have friends like Lina-san and Gourry-san, and me. Not everybody hates you." 

"Everybody hates me," Zelgadis echoed. 

Amelia tried a simpler message. "I don't. I don't hate you. I love you." This was much easier to admit while he was asleep. "I love you just the way you are. You are not a freak. You are wonderful." 

Zelgadis seemed calmed by her words. He lay still now although his face still held an expression of pain. 

Amelia reverted to the phrases her father had used for her. "It's alright. I'm here. I'll protect you. It's alright. Sleep now. Justice will prevail. Sleep now. It's alright," she repeated over and over until she put herself back to sleep. 

In Zelgadis' dream, his mother cradled him and sang his favorite song. "I love you," she told him. 

* * *

Halfway through the night, Zelgadis woke to find Amelia wrapped around him. He peeled her off and placed her firmly back in her own bed, but the faint memory of nightmares made him gentle. He spared her a thoughtful glance before rolling over to face the wall and going back to sleep. 

* * *

In the morning they set out to find Diol. His house was perched on an unnecessarily dramatic cliff. Just beyond the edge of the house, the land plummeted hundreds of feet to a narrow river valley. The house looked like it had once been magnificent but at some point in the past it had been smashed apart and inexpertly patched back together. It now reminded the viewers of a crippled animal clinging desperately to the cliff in terror. 

It was almost noon by the time they finally reached the top of the mountain. Zelgadis found himself thinking about the delivery boy he had cured with more sympathy than he had previously felt. 

"I guess Mr. Diol doesn't want too many visitors," Amelia commented, catching her breath. 

Zelgadis knocked on the door. The knocker was in the shape of a grotesque face with a gaping mouth. The door slowly, creakingly opened itself. Such a cheap magic trick failed to impress the visiting sorcerers. They walked in. As soon as they were both over the threshold the door slammed shut behind them. Amelia jumped and moved a little closer to Zelgadis. 

They were in a long, dark, twisting passageway. It had been intended to be a creepy passageway lit only by a faint eerie glow, but now the sunbeams pouring through cracks in the wall and ceiling gave it an almost cheerful atmosphere. Dust and water stains covered the floor. 

That dark, twisting hallway led to another, and another. Amelia got annoyed. "Villain, show yourself!" she shouted. 

"Hey, don't call him 'villain'," Zelgadis hissed. "We're here to ask him for help." 

An old man with bristling white eyebrows and beard stepped out of the shadows. "Ah, visitors. Welcome. Come this way. I do apologize for the wait. I didn't notice you come in." 

He led them to a room that was in much better repair than the rest of the house, although not noticeably cleaner. It was a laboratory full of glass tanks. Some of the tanks were empty. Others held embryonic monsters floating in bubbling liquid. Finished chimeras peered mournfully out of cages stacked against the far wall of the room. 

The old man turned back toward his guests and did a double take. "You're a chimera!" 

Zelgadis didn't bother to confirm such an obvious fact. 

Diol stepped closer. He peered intently into Zelgadis' face. Then he grabbed Zelgadis' hands and examined them. He twisted one of Zel's ears, studying it from all angles. He rapped his knuckles on Zel's chest. The whole time he was muttering. "Marvelous. Simply magnificent. How did he...? Superb!" 

He interrupted himself to ask, "Does this rock continue over the rest of your body?" 

"Yes." 

"How deep does it go? Are you stone all the way through?" 

"As far as I can tell, the stone is only skin deep. If it cracks, I bleed." 

"And can you perform all normal human functions: eat, sleep, de..." 

"Yes," Zelgadis replied quickly, blushing and not looking at Amelia. 

"Marvelous. Truly living stone. I have never heard of anyone achieving such a thing before. With that skin, you must be nearly invulnerable. What else did he improve?" 

"Improve?" Zelgadis restrained himself from launching into a rant about how being a chimera was in no way an improvement over being human. That would delay getting the answers he needed. 

"Your hearing perhaps?" 

"Yes. And I can move with superhuman speed for short periods of time. The change also enhanced my strength and magical abilities." 

"Fascinating. The base is obviously human, but what are the other parts?" The old sorcerer mused. "Stone golem, I would say, and something else..." 

"No. Ordinary, clay golem and rock demon, I believe." 

"Ah, I see." Diol stared at Zelgadis' skin with awed appreciation for several seconds longer before announcing, "I must try it!" 

"What?" Zelgadis and Amelia exclaimed together. 

"No, I came here because I want to be _cured_." 

"Why, you...you...I forbid you to cause anyone else the pain that Zelgadis-san has suffered. Transforming people against their will is evil, and even if you have their consent..." 

Diol appeared to notice Amelia for the first time. His eyes gleamed. "Girl, I have an offer for you that you can't resist. How would you like to have invulnerable skin, superhuman speed and hearing and enhanced strength and magical abilities like your boyfriend here? As an added bonus, you get beautiful, textured blue skin." 

The young people were so stunned that for a long moment all they could do was stare at him with their jaws hanging open. 

"And then I'd have a pair," the old man added to himself. "I wonder if stone chimeras breed in captivity." 

"NO!" Zelgadis drew his sword. "No. Don't even think about turning Amelia into a chimera." The thought of someone else, someone he knew and cared about, sharing his curse was worse than his worst nightmares. 

Diol ignored the wild-eyed maniac waving a sword at him. "Well, girl, what do you say?" 

"No." Amelia spoke softly but her eyes were blazing with passion. "You who transformed hapless visitors against their will, you who loosed chimeras to ravage the towns all around, you who created creatures at war with themselves, you are the kind of person I call evil!" Her voice had steadily crescendoed through the speech into her usual righteous shouting. She pointed an accusing finger straight into Diol's face. "Tell Zelgadis-san how to find his cure or we will make you wish you had never started meddling with the order of nature!" 

That last line was slightly out-of-character for a heroine of Justice, but Zelgadis chose not to protest. 

"Are you sure?" Diol asked. "It will only take me a few months to track down a rock demon and a suitable golem and I'm almost certain I can figure out how to do the transformation." He turned to Zelgadis. "You will let me dissect you, won't you? It's for your girlfriend after all, and I promise I'll put everything back where I found it." 

"**NO!**...and she's not my girlfriend." 

Amelia decided that freeze arrows speak louder than words, and acted accordingly. Diol was encased in a ceiling-high pillar of ice before she was satisfied. 

Zelgadis stared as his adversary literally froze in mid-word. Suddenly deprived of a target for his rage, he blinked a few more times and calmed down. That didn't mean that he was any less angry. It just meant that he was thinking clearly enough to plot revenge. He looked over at the wall of shrieking chimeras and slowly smiled. 

"Amelia," he said in a conversational tone, ambling over to the cages, "did I ever show you the spells I designed for unmaking chimeras?" 

Puzzled, Amelia let her fists unclench. "No, not the details." 

"They're still in the prototype stage, but they work well enough for a demonstration. I think now would be a good time." 

Zelgadis glanced over at Diol. By a fortunate coincidence, the frozen sorcerer's eyes were pointed in the direction of the cages. 

"Okay." Amelia walked over to join Zelgadis. "Restoring these poor creatures to their rightful selves is an act worthy of a true ally of Justice." 

"Um, right." 

Zelgadis opened one of the cages and pulled out a winged rabbit. The frightened little creature chattered its needle-sharp teeth and puffed up its bushy tail at him. 

"The first spell is for removing extra body parts," Zelgadis explained. "It goes like this." He began the incantation. The rabbit gave a thin squeal of agony. "Uh, it's best to put the subject to sleep first." 

Having corrected that mistake, Zelgadis demonstrated how to remove the creature's wings and most of its teeth. Then he used the second, transformation-based spell to change the four front teeth and its tail into shapes suitable for a rabbit. "Now you try it." 

Amelia reached into another cage and pulled out a cat-dog hybrid. Her sleep spell knocked it out before it could succeed in biting her. Slowly and with much prompting from Zelgadis, she managed to remove its second tail. 

"What should I do with the tail?" 

"Just drop it on the floor. There isn't enough of the original animal for it to survive." 

"But there's a whole series of these cat-dog things. One of the other ones might need the tail." 

"Hmm." Zelgadis thought hard. 

"I know a spell for keeping severed body parts alive. Should I use it?" 

"A spell for severed body parts? _Why_?" 

"It also helps keep people from dying during surgery. It's one of the spells most shrine maidens learn, if they learn magic." 

"Sure. Go ahead and use it." 

Between Zelgadis' chimera unmaking spells and Amelia's healing spells, they had all the cats and dogs sorted out by the time Diol managed to fight his way free of the ice. He tried to take his revenge on his troublesome guests by casting a spell, but fortunately his teeth were still chattering so hard that the spell fizzled. The noise alerted Zelgadis, who bound the chimera maker to the floor with shining chains of energy. After a little more thought, he added an invisible gag as well. 

* * *

"Zelgadis-sam..san," Amelia said awhile later. 

"What is it?" 

"I think this thing is a black dragon." 

Zelgadis walked over to look. "I think you're right." 

"What should I do with it?" 

"Just let it go. It's too small to eat anyone. And you can call me 'Zelgadis-sama' if you want to. I don't really care. Just stop stuttering." 

Amelia's face lit up. "Thank you, Zelgadis-sama!" 

Zelgadis sighed. 

* * *

"That's the last one." Amelia watched the fiery orange bird shrink into the distance. 

"That was...satisfying. I think I've figured out the final forms for the unmaking spells now." 

"Are you going to use my suggestion about simplifying the transformation spell?" 

"Yes. It was a good suggestion. You seem to have an instinct for transformation spells." 

Amelia blushed with pleasure. "Shall we go back and interrogate that chimera maker now?" 

"No, I don't think he knows anything about my type of transformation. All his chimeras were tank-grown or surgically assembled. Let's just..." He collapsed. 

"Zelgadis-sama!" Amelia whirled around. 

Diol was standing right behind them, utterly enraged. "Did you think I would just let you go after all the damage you caused?" 

Amelia shook his fallen partner. "Zelgadis-sama, wake up!" 

"Sleep," the old enchanter cast a second time. 

Amelia threw up a quick mirror-spell. The sleep spell reflected back on its caster. He slowly crumpled to the ground and started snoring. "Flow Break," Amelia broke the enchantment on Zelgadis and they left. 

As they started down the mountain by a path that would completely avoid the town, Amelia declared, "That was another example of how Justice always triumphs." 

"No, that was an example of how superior skill and cunning always triumph." 

"Fate obviously brought us here to save those poor creatures and as true allies of justice we did it." 

"If that's the case then why didn't it bring us sooner?" 

They continued on towards the sunset, arguing peacefully. Below them, a tidal wave of furry bodies -- non-chimeric for a change -- trampled the village. 

* * *

**_Author's Note:_** For those of you who don't know, Diol is a real Slayers character. He tries to turn Lina into a chimera (if he had seen the design, Zel would consider himself lucky to just be made of stone) and makes a bunch of kopii Nagas. If you ever want to see mindless destruction combined with an overwhelming bounty of bouncing bosoms... *Ahem* 

For those of you who did know that, I apologize if I didn't manage to get Diol or the town quite right. I saw those episodes only once, and that was over a year ago. If I discover that I got something wrong and I can fix it without seriously altering the story, I will. If you spot any mistakes like that, please tell me. 

The stuff about Amelia's mother is all true as far as I know. I don't have any official source on it, but it seems to be semi-official rumor. 


	9. Healing and Blessing

_**Warning:** The main characters spend most of this chapter more-or-less naked. If you are underage or offended by nudity, please set your imagination to appropriate camera angles._

* * *

**Chapter 9: Healing and Blessing**

"I can hear splashing and laughter up ahead," Zelgadis said, breaking nearly an hour of silence. 

"Finally!" Amelia did not say. She was determined not to complain, even if Zelgadis had kept them walking from dawn to past sunset the last four days straight, even if she hadn't had a bath or slept in a bed in over a week. She understood his impatience to reach their destination. She was tough. She was willing to suffer for a just cause. Still, this hot spring would feel so good! She walked a little faster. 

Half an hour later Amelia was starting to wonder if Zelgadis had only imagined the sounds of the hot spring. (She refused to believe that he had deliberately lied to her.) Then they rounded a bend in the road and there it was: Miracle Bob's Hot Spring Resort, complete with a tacky fake palm tree beside the gaudy, green and gold sign. 

"I hadn't expected it to be quite this...commercial," Amelia admitted, rubbing the back of her neck uncertainly. 

"I hadn't expected this many people." Zelgadis pulled up his hood. 

Indeed, a couple was shepherding their two small children through the entrance even as Zelgadis spoke. The noise from inside the resort, now audible to Amelia too, indicated that there were many more people having fun inside. 

Zelgadis braced himself and walked briskly toward the gate. Amelia glanced up at the palm tree again, shrugged and followed him. 

"I'm Miracle Bob. Welcome to my Hot Spring Resort! Welcome! Welcome!" the skinny man at the door called out. He looked like he had been hard-boiled in his own hot spring. He was wearing swim trunks and an unbuttoned shirt just as tacky as the rest of the resort decor. "The admission fee is twelve bronze for the day," he continued, "but for such a lovely lady, I'll make it ten." He gazed at Amelia with a flirtatious leer worn to insincerity by overuse. 

Amelia stared back at him, unsure whether to be flattered or appalled. 

Zelgadis sighed and counted out twenty-two bronze coins. "This is the legendary healing spring, right?" he asked as he handed them over. 

"Oh yes, sir! These waters have miraculous healing powers! They're guaranteed to improve the health of any invalid and brighten the day of anyone..." He took a good look at Zelgadis for the first time. Instantly, his demeanor changed from jovial sleaziness to serious business. "You can't go in there looking like that! You'll frighten the customers." 

Zelgadis sighed and reached for his money pouch again. 

Miracle Bob waved it away. "No, I really can't let you in." 

Zelgadis' hand moved from his money pouch to his sword. 

Amelia clenched her fists. "You're going to turn him away just because he's strange looking?" ("Hey," Zelgadis protested weakly) "That is completely unjust! You should not discriminate against people just because of the way they look!" 

The businessman glanced nervously from the stone man's hand clenched around his sword hilt to the girl's surprisingly dangerous-looking fists. "No, no, I won't turn you away. I'll just...would you mind using the older part of the resort instead? It's much smaller and doesn't have any decorative palm trees or lounge chairs, but you would have lots of privacy. And, um, the water up there actually has stronger healing properties. Closer to the source, you know." 

"No," Amelia declared firmly. "I demand that you treat Zelgadis-sama just like everybody else." 

"Let it go, Amelia. The older part of the resort will be fine." Zelgadis told the resort owner. 

Bob sent a silent prayer of thanks to his favorite deity. "Jake!" he called, "Come here." 

Several uneasy seconds later, a boy ambled out of the shadows. "Yeah, what do you want?" he asked with proper deference for his employer. 

"Would you show these customers to the old hot pool?" 

"Yeah, sure," the boy replied indifferently. "Follow me." 

The travelers followed him through the central corridor of the resort, Miracle Bob having vanished to deal with less troublesome customers. Jake grabbed a pair of towels off a rack before leading them out a door at the far end of the corridor. Amelia and Zel found themselves on an overgrown footpath winding up the side of the hill. 

"The 'old part of the resort' is all the way up there?" Amelia asked suspiciously. 

"Yeah," the boy replied. "The real hot spring is up there. The stuff down here is so diluted that we have to heat it artificially, but people don't like climbing." 

Amelia frowned. "Fake hot springs are a crime. That's what my sister used to say." 

"Your sister?" Zelgadis repeated, startled. 

"Gracia loved hot springs," Amelia said wistfully. "I wish she was here." 

As they climbed higher, the vegetation got more and more lush. There were ferns growing under bushes growing under short trees growing under tall trees. The sheer bulk of leaves turned the midmorning sun into green twilight. The plants should have been choking each other out, but instead they were all in perfect health. Amelia had never seen greener plants. The path survived only because it was paved with stone so solid that the plants hadn't managed to crack it yet. Even so, the threesome had to push branches out of their way with each step. 

The 'hot pool' turned out to be two wooden shacks set into a stone wall. It looked like a very plain outdoor bathhouse. 

"You can change in there." Jake pointed to the left shack, "Men's," and the right, "Women's. Or switch if you want. No one will care." He handed each of his customers a towel. "For an extra five bronze each, I'll take your clothes back to the resort to be cleaned," he added in a bored tone. 

Amelia and Zelgadis stepped through their respective doors. The wooden structures were as simple on the inside as they had looked from the outside. They had two doors, one leading to the outside and the other to the pool. Other than that, they were just wooden boxes with some clothes hooks stuck into the walls. 

The dusty travelers handed their clothing out to the boy along with the requested five bronze coins each. 

Zelgadis heard a splash and a shriek of delight from the far side of the wall. He cautiously opened the door and stepped into the pool area. It was entirely paved with tiles and moss. The floor sloped down gradually into semi-circular basin filled with invitingly clear water. The other half of the circle was hidden behind a high stone wall. The ridiculously verdant local wildlife served as a wall on the other two sides. 

"Does the water seem safe?" Zelgadis asked, dipping in a cautious toe. 

Amelia's voice floated back from the other side of the wall. "It's wonderful! It's just the perfect temperature." 

She had already waded out knee-deep. Now she slowly sat down, letting her skin adjust to the hot water a piece at a time. She groaned faintly in pleasure as the water melted away aches and pains she hadn't even noticed. She slid further in until only her face was above water. Completely limp, and already half-asleep, she let the water work its magic. 

Zelgadis stepped cautiously into the water. He knew that it would not cure his curse. He had been disappointed often enough to recognize when he was about to hit a dead-end. Still, he couldn't stop that traitorous upsurge of hope that rose in his heart every time. Despite the tacky resort at the bottom of the hill, this was a genuine legendary healing spring. It had worked miracles before. Why not for him? 

Zelgadis tried to squash that thought. Hope only made disappointment more bitter. 

He trembled as he sank into the water (its near-scalding temperature meaningless to his stone skin). He closed his eyes and tried to relax and tried to relax and opened them and held his hand up in front of his face. No change. Maybe it took time to work. He closed his eyes again and tried to be patient. 

He waited an eternity, and then another. They probably added up to three minutes. 

"Amelia?" 

"Hmm?" 

"Tell me about your sister." 

Amelia sat up in surprise. None of her friends had ever asked about her sister before. "Why do you ask?" 

"I need something to take my mind off this waiting." 

"Oh. Um." Amelia rolled over so that she could prop herself up comfortably on her elbows. "Gracia was very tall -- even taller than you -- and every inch a princess. She was always more powerful, more confident and more beautiful than me. I wish she would come back. She would make a much better queen than I would." 

"Don't you want to be queen?" 

"I want whatever is best for Seyruun. If that means giving up the throne to Gracia, I'll do it. If it means becoming queen, I'll do it." 

"How ironic. Your uncle and cousin were willing to kill to get the throne. You have it but would happily give it up." 

The long silence on the other side of the wall told him that he had just put his foot in his mouth. "Uh, Amelia?" He tried to think what to say. 

"Family is more important than power. How could they not realize that?" she said at last. The righteous anger in her voice put his mind at ease. 

Amelia fought down the emotions his careless words had roused up and began again in a conversational tone, "When Gracia and I were little we always planned to go out into the world and right wrongs once we grew up. She would go back and be queen when she was needed, but I could devote my life completely to Justice. I would spend my whole life travelling from place to place deposing evil warlords and saving damsels in distress, just like the heroes in fairytales, just like my Daddy." Zelgadis could picture her posing heroically as she spoke. 

"Then Mommy...died," Amelia's voice turned sad. "Gracia couldn't bear being inside the palace anymore -- she said that she saw blood everywhere -- so she left. I haven't seen her since then but my heart - my heart which burns with Justice - tells me that she is still alive. She is out there somewhere fighting evil." 

Privately, Zelgadis doubted it, but he had enough tact not to put his foot in his mouth a second time by saying so. He turned the conversation toward a less dangerous topic. 

* * *

Zelgadis' sleepy mind drifted onto an unusual topic, romance. It was a subject he had rarely thought about since he had become a chimera. Since he was a freak that no sane girl would want to associate with, there was no point in thinking about it. Besides, the few girls he had met (most of them insane) had all been unsuitable in one way or another. 

He had almost fallen for Miwan, a princess who longed to escape the life her mother was forcing her into. Then he found out just what Miwan meant when she said she was living a lie. Let's just say it crushed any romantic ideas he might have had about her. 

Sylphiel, a shrine maiden of Sairaag, was sweet but between her obvious crush on Gourry and her tragic loss of her homeland, it would have been utterly tasteless for Zelgadis to even think about forming a romantic attachment to her, even if he hadn't been a chimera. 

Martina he never even considered. 

Filia was pretty but she was also a dragon. She looked and acted about fifteen but she was probably centuries old. She was also fantastically strong and amazingly destructive when she lost her temper. As a mere mortal, Zelgadis saw her a dragon, not a girl. 

Lina...he really might have fallen in love with Lina if it wasn't for Gourry but, as it was, he didn't want to come between them. That was partially because he didn't want to hurt Gourry, but it was more because their bond was so tight that anyone who tried to come between them would probably get crushed. The first time that he had met them, back when he was still working for Rezo, he would never have guessed that they had met less than a day earlier. They already worked together like partners. When he had parted ways with them on the outskirts of Atlas City a few days later, their excuses for staying together had been so flimsy that Zelgadis had been sure that they would either break up or become lovers within a month. The next time he met them, during the fight with Kopii Rezo, he was puzzled to discover that they had done neither despite fighting constantly and at the same time showing every sign of deep mutual affection. It was one of the strangest relationships he had ever seen. 

During his later travels with them, Zelgadis had often shared a room with Gourry at night and they had sometimes talked. Gourry had always had words of comfort for Zelgadis when he woke from screaming nightmares, and in return Zelgadis had often offered words of advice when Gourry was suffering from Lina problems. Zel was sure that Lina returned Gourry's feelings. She tended to glance guiltily at him whenever she was asked about her love life or the reason why she cast the Giga Slave. That girl couldn't hide anything. Some day Lina would grow up enough to realize that love was not a prince on a shining white horse sweeping her off her feet, and Gourry would get the courage not to mess up all potentially romantic moments, and then things would get truly interesting. 

No, Zelgadis did not want to fall in love with Lina. She was smart, funny, warm and really quite cute, but Zel would not want a girlfriend who regularly beat up her partner as a form of stress relief. Leave that for Gourry; he was better at dodging. 

Then there was Amelia. Zelgadis wasn't sure what to think about her any more. Up until very recently Zelgadis had dismissed all amorous thoughts about her because she was a child (no matter how womanly her figure) and Zel was not a pedophile. Her face was cute and her justice obsession was cute and her little crush on him was cute, but Zelgadis was not particularly drawn to cuteness. Now, though...Amelia was no longer the klutzy, naive child he had first met. She hadn't fallen on her face during a battle since...he couldn't remember when the last time had been. She was still frighteningly naive but not because of ignorance. She simply had an overly optimistic and trusting nature and probably always would. The tragedy in her past would have already broken her spirit if it was breakable. 

She was still pretty cute, but the prettiness was gaining dominance over the cuteness. 

There was something in her voice sometimes, or her eyes, that hinted at the woman she would soon become. These glimpses of maturity were all the more tantalizing because most of the time and in most ways Amelia was still the excessively cute little girl he knew. It was disconcerting. Were all teenage girls like this? 

It was also getting increasingly hard to deny that Amelia really did love him. He had always dismissed her feelings as a silly adolescent crush, but crushes usually did not last for nearly two years, nor were they usually combined with honest friendship. People say that love is blind, but the truth is that love knows the object of its affections. Otherwise it is just the love of an illusion. Amelia had seen Zelgadis at his worst. She had put up with his fits of irritability and depression and seen his worst moments of humiliation. She had endured his indifference. Through it all she had continued to look at him with the same admiration. It was all the harder to deny because she was so discrete about it. She never clung to him or called him by pet names or flirted with him. She just gave him admiring glances and leapt between him and attackers (even though he had stone skin and she didn't) and occasionally told him that he looked fine just the way he was. He couldn't deny her feelings and, with recent events, it was getting harder and harder to ignore them. 

Of course, even if Amelia grew into a dazzlingly beautiful woman who was passionately in love with him (Zelgadis snorted at that mental image), he still couldn't allow himself to get romantically involved with her. He was a chimera, a freak, a monster. He couldn't kiss a woman without his hair impaling her tender skin. He couldn't embrace her without leaving bruises. Even if Amelia liked the way he looked, that was just a sign of her poor taste. He was hideous. He refused to impose himself on any woman, much less on someone he cared about. If he ever did fall in love with someone, he would best show that love by staying as far away from her as possible. The situation was hopeless. 

Why was he thinking about something so foolish anyway? Zelgadis shoved the pointless musings out of his head and stood up. 

* * *

Amelia dreamed of a book that held all the knowledge in the world. She flipped quickly past the true story of creation, past secret lores from other worlds, past poetry so beautiful that it would have etched itself on her heart if she had paused long enough to read it. She knew that she only had enough time to learn one thing out of all this vast body of knowledge. She had to make it count. She had to find something truly valuable and just. 

This page was titled, "The Life of Gracia Ul Naga Seyruun". Amelia forced herself to turn the page. Here was a white magic spell so powerful that it could erase Mazoku or bring the freshly dead back to life. Amelia kept looking. 

Here was the secret of unmaking chimeras. At once Amelia knew that this was what she came here to find. She looked longingly at the rest of the book -- There were so many pages that she hadn't even flipped through yet! -- but she bent her head to study Zelgadis' cure. 

She finished the last page. Now she knew exactly how to make Zelgadis human again. She raised her hands and started chanting. As the spell progressed, his stone skin melted and ran down his body. It dripped from his fingers, leaving behind soft, pink skin. As the last drop slid away, he lifted his bowed head... 

A splashing sound from the far side of the wall woke Amelia and she immediately forgot the dream. 

"Zelgadis-san?" Amelia called out, yawning. "Is that you?" 

"Yes." 

"What are you doing?" 

"I'm leaving. This 'healing spring' is a fake. I've been sitting in it for two hours and still look exactly the way I did when I got in." 

Amelia glanced down at her hands. They had changed. They were significantly cleaner and more wrinkly than they had been two hours ago. "But that boy hasn't come back with our clothes yet!" 

Zelgadis checked the change room just in case she was wrong. She was right. "Then I'll just sit here and wait for him." 

Zel wrapped his towel around his waist and stepped out of the bathhouse. He sat down on a log placed beside the path to help keep the undergrowth at bay. 

A minute later, Amelia emerged from her change room, covered from armpits to thighs by her fluffy, white towel. She pretended not to stare curiously at Zelgadis' bumpy chest, arms and legs as she sat down on the other end of the log. She rarely got to see anything more than his face and fingertips. He really was very attractive despite his stone skin. 

Zel covered himself up as best he could by wrapping his arms around his chest. He shot Amelia a 'do-you-mind?' glare. She was innocently looking at a patch of ferns on the other side of the path. 

"It's a wonderful pool, but it does get boring after awhile, doesn't it?" Amelia commented for the sake of conversation. 

"Yes," Zelgadis grudgingly replied. 

There was a rather uncomfortable silence. 

"Where are we going next?" Amelia asked. 

"There's a city a day's walk north of here where we can get supplies. After that, I don't know." 

"Oh." 

There was more silence. Zelgadis brooded on dead ends. Amelia stared thoughtfully at her knees. 

"That's odd." 

"What is?" Zelgadis asked, annoyed at being distracted from his gloom. 

"My knees are smooth. I used to scrape them a lot as a child." Actually, the last time had been only a few months ago, but he didn't need to know that. "They should be covered in scars, but they aren't. The scar is gone from my leg too." She stretched said leg out in front of her so that she could get a better look at it. "And the finger I burnt while cooking last night feels fine." 

Zelgadis glanced over at the leg and immediately wished he hadn't. He wasn't comfortable seeing that much of her flesh. Instead, he stared at his own, freakish body. Wait, now that she mentioned it... 

"The scratches are gone from my body too," he realized. "There should be scratches on my arms here and here and three here." He indicated the spots. "And one across my abdomen here. The chip in my shoulder is gone too." He squinted down at it. Yes, it was definitely missing. 

Amelia was impressed. "That healing spring is even more powerful than the legend said." 

"Maybe, but I'm still a chimera." 

"Be fair, Zelgadis-sama. Nobody ever claimed that the spring cures curses or transformations." 

"Mmm." 

Silence descended again, but somehow it felt more comfortable this time. Birds chirped. A breeze rustled through the leaves. A stream burbled somewhere just out of sight. The sun shone warmly. 

"My, my, I certainly didn't expect it to be you." 

Zelgadis and Amelia spun around at the familiar voice. 

"What are you doing here?" Zelgadis growled. 

"Xellos-san!" Amelia exclaimed, clutching her towel more tightly. 

Sure enough, the mazoku priest was standing behind them, leaning against a tree. 

Zelgadis wrapped his arms around himself again. Of all the times Xellos could have picked to show up... 

"My master sent me to investigate a wedding ceremony conducted a few weeks ago in her name. She is not often invoked at weddings so she was curious about this one. I believe it was in that forest a colony of beastmen and chimeras recently colonized. Do you know anything about it?" 

Their guilty faces answered in the affirmative. "No," Zelgadis said coldly. 

"Congratulations, dear friends!" Xellos beamed, ignoring the denial. "I'm sure you will be happy together. You should have told me you were getting married! I would have come to the wedding." 

"We are not married," Zelgadis growled. "That farce in the Chimera Forest meant nothing." 

"It was an unjust act done to us against our wills," Amelia agreed. 

Xellos' mouth formed a cute little 'o' of mock-surprise, which changed to a chin-in-hand, thoughtful expression. "You don't want to be married?" 

"No!" Zelgadis replied a little too forcefully. 

"No," Amelia echoed, not quite forcefully enough. 

"What a pity," Xellos sighed. "My master told me to give you her blessing in person. The mazoku race is very much in favor of this match." 

Amelia looked stricken. 

"Too bad," Zelgadis growled. 

"Yes, it is," Xellos agreed. "From what I heard, that ceremony was missing only one thing necessary to make it complete." 

Amelia's face lit up with relief. "It was missing something?" 

"What was it missing?" Zelgadis asked warily. 

"The blessing of a priest, of course. Fortunately, I am the Beastmaster's one priest, so I can remedy that." 

"But we don't want..." 

Xellos' hands slammed down on their shoulders. "Consider this my wedding present," he smiled. 

Then wave upon wave of black energy poured into their bodies. Amelia and Zelgadis screamed as hatred, rage and madness shocked through their veins. It poured down their arms and concentrated in their left hands, which convulsed. Then it oozed out their skin and congealed into a thin, gold band around the base of each one's ring finger. 

While they were still gasping for breath and staring in horror at their hands, Xellos straightened up. "Well, I must be going -- other business to take care of, you know. Bye bye." Xellos started to fade away. He paused. "Amelia-san, you might want to pull that towel back up." He opened one eye in a wink and then vanished. 

Amelia quickly rewrapped the towel around herself, blushing angrily (and facing away from Zelgadis). That...that perverted, sadistic mazoku _garbage_. "I'm going to wait by the pool," she said, matching actions to words. 

Zelgadis nodded without looking up. He was tugging on his new ring. "This ring won't come off." 

Amelia paused in the act of opening the changing room door. She yanked on her ring. "Mine won't come off either. I think it's attached to my skin." She flexed her hand. Her hand felt perfectly normal now except for the unaccustomed hard ridge of the ring, but the memory of pain remained. 

Zelgadis tugged on his ring again. It didn't even budge. It might as well have been welded onto his finger. 

What was Xellos up to? It had been more than mere teasing. The black magic rings showed that. And what had he meant by, "The mazoku race is very much in favor of this match"? Zelgadis was afraid he could guess. The blood of Rezo and Lei Magnus flowed in his veins. If that blood got into the Seyruun royal family, protectors of the most powerful white magic city in the world... Yes, the mazoku would be "very much in favor" of that. Was that all, or did Xellos have some deeper plot? As always, it was impossible to tell. Zelgadis would have to keep his eyes open. 

Amelia soaked her hands and feet in the pool. She felt shaken. Why had their old friend Xellos shown up so briefly just to hurt them? She knew that he was a mazoku, and therefore evil by definition, but he was usually nicer than that. And had he been telling the truth about marrying them? Xellos almost never lied, but he rarely told the truth either. 

Amelia wasn't sure how she felt about being married to Zelgadis. She used to daydream about it sometimes, but the reality was proving very different from her daydreams. She didn't want to be married to him if that made him unhappy, or if it made the mazoku race happy. Anything that the mazoku race was "very much in favor of" was probably bad for the human race, but Amelia couldn't think why the mazoku would care whom she married. She hugged her knees to her chest. The whole situation made her feel very vulnerable. 

When Jake finally returned with their clothes, Amelia and Zelgadis silently left the resort. This had been their last lead. They were too dispirited even to buy a vial of healing water from the gift shop on the way out. 

* * *

**_Author's Note:_** Gratuitous nudity, Zel in a romantic frame of mind, Xellos showing up...can we say 'fan-service'? Well, author-service actually. You know I enjoy it at least as much as you do. 


	10. Musical Interlude

**Chapter 10: Musical Interlude**

Upon returning to camp Zel was greeted by the disconcerting sight of Amelia cuddling a baby. Where in the world had she gotten it? He had only been gone an hour! 

"Where did that baby come from?" he demanded, stalking into view. 

Amelia jumped and clutched the baby. "You startled me!" 

The baby started to cry in protest at the rough treatment. Amelia cuddled it back into smiles again as if she had been born knowing how to take care of babies. 

"Isn't he cute?" She held the baby up proudly. 

It had a plump face, almost no hair and only three teeth, currently bared in an idiotic grin. It didn't exactly fit Zel's definition of cute, but it probably wouldn't be wise to say that. 

"Where did it come from?" he repeated. 

"He." 

"What?" 

"He's a boy." 

"Alright, where did _he_ come from?" Zelgadis repeated again, rapidly losing patience. 

"He just arrived a little while ago, didn't you? Yes, you did!" The last was addressed in sugary sweet tones to the baby. "I'm watching him while his mommy and daddy practice." 

That didn't clarify the situation much. "Where are his parents?" 

"I told you, they're practicing." 

"Practicing _what_?" 

"Their festival song." 

"A couple with a baby came here to practice a festival song and you volunteered to take care of their baby?" The situation was still nonsensical. "And where are they practicing their...Never mind, I hear them." In this case, inhumanly sensitive hearing was not necessarily an advantage. "They aren't very good, are they?" 

"That's why we're going to help them." 

"We're going to _what_?" 

* * *

"What song are you going to use? Amelia asked, seating herself in the most graceful music appreciation pose she could manage while holding onto Zelgadis' cape. The baby was lying on the ground beside her. 

"It's called 'Spring Song.'" Gerald handed her the songbook. "You can look at it if you like. We've got it pretty much memorized." 

"I'll just listen for now." Amelia put the songbook down on the grass beside her and folded her hand in her lap. 

Zelgadis picked up the book and glanced over the song in mild curiosity. It was a love song, he noted without surprise, trite, cliched and nearly nonsensical. Musically, it was repetitious and unoriginal. He put the book down again, yanked his cloak out of Amelia's grasp and departed the musical scene. 

The young musicians watched him go. When they saw that he really was leaving, they shrugged and started singing to their two remaining audience members. 

Three verses and two and a half repetitions of the chorus later, Zelgadis came storming back into the clearing. 

"Give me your guitar," he demanded in a tone of barely controlled rage. Gerald clutched his guitar protectively. "Now!" Zelgadis snapped. Gerald handed over the guitar. 

To everyone's surprise, Zelgadis slung the strap over his own head and started tuning the instrument. When it was tuned to his satisfaction, he added, "And the chorus goes like this." He sang it correctly. "You were an entire semitone flat on the last note." He handed the guitar back, preparatory to stomping off again. 

"I didn't know you knew this song," Kate said, blinking in surprise. 

"I don't have to know it. It's right there in the songbook." 

The other three considered this. "You can read music, Zelgadis-sama?" Amelia asked. 

"Can't you?" A dawning sense of apprehension crept over Zelgadis as he stared back at their blank faces. "...any of you?" 

* * *

An hour later, Zel had somehow become the lead singer. He was sure he had not agreed to this, but somehow consent didn't seem to be necessary when Amelia got excited about an idea. Neither did human decency. 

"You'll watch little Harold for us while we go get costumes for you and Amelia, won't you?" 

"You want me to _babysit_?" 

"Thanks, you're such a dear! Don't worry. He's asleep so he won't be any trouble." 

And they were gone before Zelgadis could protest. 

He looked down morosely at the sleeping baby. He would bet significant amounts of money that it wouldn't stay asleep. 

Casting another suspicious glance at the ugly little thing, he picked up the guitar they had left him and settled down to wait. His playing lacked the delicacy and skill of the years when he still had feeling in his hands and practiced regularly, but even with stone fingers he was still far better than Gerald. 

Zel had never considered himself particularly musical. Music was just something his mother had taught him as a child, like the three R's: reading, writing and 'rithmatic. He had been surprised to discover that not everybody learned it. Of course, most people's childhood lessons didn't seem to include forgotten languages, arcane scripts or trigonometry either. People could be so ignorant. 

* * *

"We're back!" Kate called out. "Did you miss us?" 

Zelgadis sat up, rubbing his eyes. The horrors the baby had subjected him to in the last few hours had completely worn him out. He would never have believed that something so ungainly could crawl so fast. "Huh?" he asked groggily, "Did I...?" 

Kate had already scooped up her baby for intense maternal cuddling. "Did you miss us?" she cooed. "I missed you, yes I did! _Yes, I did!_" 

Zelgadis flopped back onto the ground again in disgust. 

"I'm sorry we were gone so long," Amelia's voice approached him. "Kate's spare costume was too small for me so we had to borrow some clothing from her friend. It turned out to be a good thing because her friend's husband lent us his guitar, so now both you and Gerald will be able to play. Um, Zelgadis-sama, are you asleep? Um, I've got your costume here. Would you like to try it on?" 

Zelgadis reluctantly sat up again and opened his eyes. The sight that met them almost made them pop out of their sockets. "A-Amelia? What are you...wearing?" 

"It's my festival costume. Do you like it?" Amelia held out her arms and spun around so that he could get a better look. He would have been happier without it. 

"You're planning to wear that in public?" 

"Yes. Is there something wrong with that?" 

"Uh...no. No. Wear whatever you want." 

The clouds of worry broke up, revealing Amelia's sunniest smile. "Here's your costume." She gestured to the clothing folded over her arm. "It's just like Gerald's except darker." 

Zelgadis looked around. Kate, who was still lavishing loving attention on baby Harold, was dressed similarly to Amelia, but with her quiet, maternal personality and less dramatic figure, it wasn't as provocative. Gerald, standing beside her, had a guitar hanging from his neck, and under that...Zel blanched. 

"But, Amelia, no one wants to see a freak like me half-naked," he protested. 

"It's traditional for festival dances," Amelia explained patiently. 

"No. I refuse. I want nothing to do with this festival. I quit." 

As Zelgadis stood up, he caught sight of Amelia's face. Her chin was set and her eyes held an expression of steel-hard determination. 

* * *

"Yay, I think we've got it!" Amelia shrieked, bouncing with delight. 

"Yes, it sounded just lovely that time," Kate agreed warmly. 

"Just in time, too," Gerald said, pointing at the horizon. "The sun is setting." 

"You two will stay with us for the night, won't you?" Kate offered. "I just wouldn't feel right not offering you hospitality when you're doing so much for us." 

Amelia didn't bother to consult with her partner before answering, "Of course. We'd love to!" 

Gerald and Kate's house turned out to be a cottage on the edge of town. It was rather small and plain but even Zelgadis had to admit (now that he was back in his usual clothes and therefore in a slightly better mood) that it looked well cared for. The town itself was medium sized. It looked like the kind of place where teenagers spent most of their time telling each other what they would do when they got to the big city. Tonight, though, the streets were decorated with bright banners in preparation for tomorrow's festival. 

"We really are more grateful to you than words can express," Kate said as she ladled stew into everyone's bowl. "I know we aren't very good, but we just have to win the festival, for little Harold's sake. 

"Harold's sake?" Zelgadis was surprised into asking. 

"Yes, so that he can have what every child should have. The prize for the song and dance competition..." 

"That's beautiful!" Amelia's eyes shone with emotion. "Now that I know the nobility of the cause I will put all my heart and soul into this competition! I will not fail you!" She ended her speech with one foot on the seat of her chair, the other on the chair back and her fist thrust heroically at the ceiling. Kate and Gerald applauded. Harold tipped over his bowl. 

During the ensuing meal, the baby managed to coat himself, his highchair, and an impressive portion of his surroundings with stew. Zelgadis tried to ignore everything except his own bowl. Once it was empty, he quickly excused himself and sought out the guestroom. 

The first thing he noticed upon entering the room was the musty smell. The second thing was that there was only one bed and it was barely big enough for two people. He went back to the kitchen. 

"There's only one bed," he accused. 

"Well, of course," Kate said. Then her eyes widened in concern. "You two aren't having..." Her voice fell to a hush, "...marital problems?" 

"Marital..." Zelgadis spluttered. He followed Kate's gaze to the ring clearly visible on Amelia's hand. He closed his eyes in a wordless, undirected prayer for patience. "Right." He turned on his heel, cheeks burning, and went back to the guestroom. 

There he flung open the window and sat down on the floor beneath it, meditatively strumming his guitar. As always, the tension in his body seemed to flow out through his fingers and drip from the strings as music. He let his mind flow away with it. 

When he was completely at peace, he let the strings fall silent. He looked up. Amelia was sitting on the edge of the bed looking down at him. "That was beautiful," she said softly. 

Zelgadis leaned the guitar against the wall and climbed out the window. 

"Where are you going?" Amelia called in alarm. 

"The garden. I'd rather sleep outside." 

* * *

There was a figure hunched up on the ground with its face buried in its knees. All Zelgadis could make out about him (or her?) was that he was crying. Somehow, though, the sight sent dread through his veins. He moved closer and placed a comforting hand on the trembling shoulder. The white-clad stranger looked up at him, tears spilling from her eyes. It was Amelia, but her skin was dark and rock-studded and her soft, dark hair had become brittle wire. 

Zelgadis jerked awake, panting. He was curled up beside a flowerbed surrounded by the pitch-blackness of midnight. It had only been a dream. 

He tried to go back to sleep but that last, terrible image would not leave his mind. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Amelia huddled crying in the middle of a vast, barren expanse or looking up at him with a chimera's face. 

"She's fine. It was just a nightmare." He told his irrational fears impatiently. But in the darkness of midnight, on the edge of sleep, horrible impossibilities were not quite as unbelievable as they should have been. 

Absolutely disgusted with himself, Zelgadis stood up and felt his way to the window. Leaning into the room, he cast just enough of a light spell so that he could see her face clearly. It was as human as always. He sighed in relief and then shook his head in disgust. What a stupid thing to do. Well, maybe he would be able to sleep now. 

He was just about to leave as silently as he came when a voice behind him shouted, "Halt! Who goes there?" 

Zelgadis turned back towards the bed. Amelia was sitting bolt upright and, he noticed with a sinking heart, her eyes were opening. 

"It's just me," he hissed. "Go back to sleep." 

"Zelgadis-san?" Amelia held up a light spell in one hand while she sleepily rubbed her eyes with the other. "What are you doing?" 

"Nothing. I was...just checking to make sure you're alright." 

"Of course I am. Do you always come check on me in the middle of the night?" 

"No, I just..." Of all the excuses Zelgadis could think of, the truth was the least dangerous. "I just had a bad dream. I didn't mean to disturb you. I'm sorry. It was a stupid thing to do. I'll go now." He backed away from the window. 

Amelia disentangled herself from the bed sheets and came to the window. "A bad dream? Then you were right to come to me. As your guardian against bad dreams, I will help you fight off any nightmare, no matter how horrific! Shall I come sleep in the garden with you for the rest of the night?" 

"No! I'm fine now. Please don't worry about it." 

"At least tell me what your dream was. I need to be prepared to fight it if it ever returns!" 

Zelgadis saw that she wouldn't let either of them rest until he told her, so he described the dream in a few terse sentences. 

Amelia didn't respond immediately. She rested her elbows on the window ledge in thoughtful silence. "If Diol had turned me into a chimera, I probably would have cried," she said at last, "but only for a little while. Then I would have stopped crying and started fighting for justice again. It doesn't matter what I look like as long as I stay true to my goals." 

"Right, I forgot that you think chimeras are 'cool looking'," Zelgadis answered dryly. 

"I don't want to be a chimera. But if I did become one, it wouldn't change anything truly important. As long as I have my friends and family and a worthy cause to fight for, I know that I can find happiness!" 

"Are you saying that I'm wasting my time searching for my cure? That I should just accept that I'm a freak and be happy about it? I can't do that. As long as there is a possibility that my cure exists, I can't rest until I find it." 

"I thought we were talking about me." 

Zelgadis rolled his eyes. 

"Zelgadis-sama, I do want you to find your cure. That's why I'm here. What your grandfather did to you was truly unjust and I will do anything in my power to right that injustice. But if we don't find your cure, never forget that you have friends who like you just the way you are." 

"Does that mean that you wouldn't like me if I was human?" 

"Of course not! Whether you are a chimera for the rest of your life or whether you become human tomorrow, I'll like you just the same. And it's not nice to twist people's words." 

"Can I go now?" 

"Um, okay. Good night." 

In the darkness after Zelgadis left, Amelia sighed unhappily. She had poured her heart out and he had ignored her, _again_. Why did she have to love someone so insensitive? Still, he had nightmares about her. That showed that he cared at least a little bit, right? 

When he finally managed to fall asleep again, Zelgadis found himself back in the same barren wasteland as before but this time he was completely alone. He walked on and on, sand crunching under his feet. 

A baby's wail woke him. For a moment he tried to recall his dream. It had been something frustrating and repetitious. Flipping the pages of an illegible book? Walking across a featureless landscape? He couldn't remember, and it wasn't important. 

He dragged himself to his feet, groaning at the thought of the day ahead of him. 

* * *

Zelgadis peered around the edge of the back curtain. The man on stage was doing disturbing things with vegetables. The audience members were laughing so hard that they were in danger of falling out of their seats. 

Gerald looked over Zel's shoulder. "Ain't Bertie funny? The only thing I regret about singing in the contest is that I have to miss his performance. It's always the highlight of the festival." He misinterpreted Zel's horrified expression. "Don't worry; we're not up against him. We're in a different category." 

Bertie did a particularly suggestive move with a squash and Gerald burst into guffaws. Zelgadis quickly retreated. He carefully placed himself between Amelia and any possible view of the stage. She might be offended or, worse, she might laugh. 

"Do you see my baby?" Kate asked anxiously. They had left Harold with friends in the audience. 

"Yup. He's right there." Gerald pointed. Kate sighed with relief. 

Finally the vegetable act ended after four curtain calls and innumerable catcalls. 

Zelgadis yanked on his borrowed costume again. Most of his rocky chest was completely exposed. This was already one of the most humiliating experiences of his life and they weren't even on stage yet. 

He tried to go on anyway. "Does everybody remember their parts?" he asked one last time. 

There was a round of nods. 

"Let's go!" Amelia shouted. 

* * *

The quartet stumbled onto the stage, clutching their instruments and grinning like maniacs (in three cases). As they caught sight of the large, still-snickering crowd, they all halted self-consciously. Amelia unconsciously wrapped her arms around her bare midriff. Kate yanked on her tiny skirt in an unnecessary attempt to straighten it. Gerald ran a hand through his hair. Zelgadis just stood petrified. 

Gerald walked up to the front of the stage. "Hi, y'all. I'm Gerald. This is my lovely wife Kate and these are Amelia and Zelgadis from out of town. We're going to sing 'Spring Song' for you." He walked over to his back-up singer position. 

Amelia swallowed hard. She had never sung in public before. She called to mind the words of advice her father had given her before her first big speech. "Even though you're scared, do it anyway...for Justice." 

She could do this. Yes, she was scared, but for the sake of little Harold and all the expectant people in the audience she would sing her best! 

Amelia stood up very straight, filled with the nobility of her cause, and marched up to the front of the stage. After a few steps, she noticed that Zelgadis wasn't following her so she grabbed his arm and dragged him with her. 

She looked around. Everyone was in place. The crowd was watching them curiously. It was time. She nodded meaningfully at Zelgadis, who finally reanimated enough to nod stiffly back. He silently fingered a few chords for courage and then called out, "1...2...3...4..." 

Two guitars simultaneously launched into the opening notes of the song. Amelia closed her eyes and let the music wash over her, waiting for her cue. 

Soon...almost...now! 

"A small flower blooming alone," Amelia and Zelgadis sang together. 

"Alone, alone," Gerald and Kate echoed. 

Kate and Amelia moved their arms through the ritual gestures they had practiced earlier. 

"Like moonlight on snow (sno-o-ow)  
You are in the garden of my heart. (aaa-ah)" 

Zelgadis grimaced and launched into his solo verse while staring lovingly at Amelia's ear. 

"You're the sap in my veins (ve-eins)  
The sun in my sky (high in the sky)  
I would wither if you were gone (aaa-ah)" 

Amelia's pure, sweet voice soared solo through the next verse. "Cherry blossoms falling (falling, falling)  
Warm April showers (April showers)  
Drench me in your budding love (aaa-ah)" 

Now for the chorus. Zelgadis and Amelia stared deeply into each other's eyebrows, not quite able to look each other in the eye. Both of them were bright pink with embarrassment. 

"Icicle teardrops," Zelgadis crooned 

"Icicle teardrops," Amelia echoed. 

"Icicle teardrops," the other two repeated yet again. 

"Your sunshine smile," Zelgadis sang on falling notes. 

"Your sunshine smile," Amelia sang on rising notes. 

"Sunshine smile," the backup filled in the middle. 

All of them combined for "Spring thaw in the winter of my heart." 

Now they just had to repeat it over and over again ad nauseam. 

"You're the sap in my veins," Zelgadis and Amelia sang in harmony, "the sun in my sky. I would wither if you were gone." 

They went through the chorus again. 

Gerald and Zelgadis sang the next verse in unison with the girls providing backup. 

"Cherry blossoms falling  
Warm April showers,  
Drench me in you budding love." 

The chorus yet again, with variations, and a fourth time just for good measure. 

"A small flower blooming alo-" Amelia held the last note while Zelgadis sang, "Icicle teardrops." 

"-ne, like moonlight on sno-" 

"Your sunshine smile." 

Together in harmony at the end, "You are / Spring thaw in the garden/winter of my heart. In the..." Zel "winter," Amelia "garden," both "of my heart." 

They finished softly. Zel placed a hand over the strings to still them. They stared at each other with an expression that could have passed for true love if you were sitting more than twenty feet away and were slightly nearsighted. 

Then, without warning, Amelia cast a Burst Rondo into the air high above the audience. As the pseudo-fireworks went off overhead, the crowd burst into enthusiastic cheers. 

Amelia, Gerald and Kate waved back, glowing with pride. Zelgadis began muttering under his breath things which it would be better not to repeat in print. "Cold-hearted sorcerer/swordsman" and "heartless demon" were some of the milder phrases. 

As soon as he judged the cheering had gone on long enough, Zelgadis stalked off backstage. The other three followed him reluctantly, still waving. 

Backstage, an adrenaline-drunk Amelia danced around Zelgadis. "They liked us! They really liked us! We were great! I think singing is almost as noble a profession as acting! Zelgadis-san, I had no idea you were such a good performer! Let's do it again someday!" 

"No." Zelgadis put the finality of a hundred sarcophagus lids slamming shut into that one brief syllable. 

* * *

Two enthusiastic fangirls managed to corner Zelgadis after the show. "That is the coolest costume ever!" one of them squealed. 

The other nodded enthusiastically. "How did you get your skin that gorgeous shade of blue? Is it paint?" She reached out to test her hypothesis with her fingertips. Zelgadis backed away straight into a wall. 

"And where did you find the rocks for around your eyes? I've never seen any quite like them before." The first girl reached out too. Zelgadis cringed. 

"Zelgadis-sama, there you are!" Amelia shouted. She ran to him and grabbed his arm, unintentionally flashing her ring at the fangirls. "Come on, they're about to announce the winners!" 

"Hey, you have a beautiful voice, Zelgadis-sama!" one of the fangirls called to her departing idol. 

"And a beautiful body," her friend giggled. 

"That's for sure," the first one agreed. "What a pity he's taken." 

"Yeah," the second one sighed. 

Zelgadis blushed and wished for less keen hearing. 

As they approached, the announcer was saying, "In the comedy category, the winner is...What a surprise! ...Bertie, for the eighth year in a row. The prize is a new shirt since we noticed that your old one is getting worn out." 

Bertie walked up to the platform, grinning and waving his most amusingly shaped gourd. Zelgadis shut his eyes. Could the man be any more vulgar? 

"In the play category, the winner is...the DragonSlave Players with 'The Adventures of Volun the Mighty.'" A dozen or so slightly singed people exuding a faint odor of dynamite pushed their way up to the announcer's platform and received their prize. 

"In the song and dance category..." (Amelia elbowed Zelgadis excitedly.) "...the winners are...Gerald and Kate with 'Spring Song.'" 

Amelia shrieked and danced with joy. "We won! Zelgadis-sama, we won!" She threw her arms around the nonplussed chimera. Even Zelgadis had to smile faintly in pride. 

Gerald and Kate walked up to the announcer. The young wife held her son tightly in her arms. 

"...and your prize is..." the announcer announced, "...this oversized teddy bear made by the talented seamstress Eliza Stoat!" A middle-aged woman on the platform waved to the crowd before handing Kate the teddy bear. 

"Look at that, Harold! You finally have a teddy bear like all the other children," Kate cooed. 

Zelgadis' jaw dropped. "We went through all that...for a teddy bear?" 

"It was still a selfless act worthy of true allies of Justice!" Amelia said, but her voice lacked sincerity and her eyebrows were twitching with annoyance. Then her annoyance dissolved like mist in the face of her sunny personality. "And it was fun!" 

Zelgadis shook his head in disgust. 

* * *

**_Author's Note:_** It wouldn't be Slayers without at least one silly episode completely unrelated to the main plot, right? 

This chapter obviously owes a lot to the festival-songs episode of Slayers NEXT. If I hadn't seen that episode, I would never have guessed that festival music in the Slayers world sounds like really trite and syrupy j-pop and requires wearing embarrassingly skimpy outfits. It also owes a lot to the episode of Slayers TRY where Zelgadis finds an old guitar and spends the rest of the episode playing it beautifully for no apparent reason. 

Yes, I wrote Spring Song myself (with some help from my sisters). I have absolutely no talent for poetry or song lyrics, but fortunately this didn't require any. For an even more authentic bad j-pop feel, I recommend putting random words in all caps (ex. A small flower blooming ALONE/ Moonlight on snow/ YOU ARE in the garden of my heart), but my alpha-critics told me that was just stupid. 

When I describe Amelia and Zel's voices in this chapter, I use a kind of average of the subbed and dubbed versions of "A Young Girl's Prayer." Zel has a beautiful singing voice in both versions so he is the best singer in this chapter. Amelia has a lovely singing voice in Japanese but in English...not so lovely. Therefore, I imagine her voice as good but untrained. 


	11. It Can't Hurt to Try

**Chapter 11: It Can't Hurt to Try**

"...The princess kissed the frog and he turned into a handsome prince. Everyone was very surprised, as you can imagine, but once they got over the shock, the princess and the ex-frog got married. They lived happily ever after." 

The inn erupted into applause and chatter. The bard smiled and bowed. As her husband took over with a pretty lute melody, Zelgadis and Amelia slipped away. 

"I wish undoing a transformation curse was as easy in real life as it is in stories," Zelgadis said bitterly as they climbed the stairs. 

"How do you know it isn't?" Amelia asked, "Have you ever been kissed by a beautiful princess?" 

Zelgadis stared at her for a long moment. "Don't be ridiculous." 

He stormed up the rest of the stairs and into their room. They had to share a room because the bards had taken the only other guestroom in the inn, but at least they had separate beds. 

Amelia followed him. "It's worth a try, isn't it? We both swore that we would do anything necessary to find your cure." She stood tall with a noble look of self-sacrifice. 

This is insane, Zelgadis thought, but if there was any chance at all that it might work.... "I guess it can't hurt to try." 

Amelia stepped toward Zelgadis. 

"Wait." He held up a hand. "We are suggesting that you kiss me, right?" The last time he thought she was offering to kiss him, he got a nasty surprise. 

"Yes," Amelia confirmed. 

She took another step closer. They were both blushing furiously. She put a hand on his shoulder to pull him down into easier reach. She leaned forward. She pressed her lips against the smooth, cool stone of his cheek. She drew back. They stared at each other. No change. 

Then Amelia darted forward and kissed Zelgadis quickly on the mouth. 

"What did you do that for?" he spluttered as soon as he gathered his wits enough to react at all. 

Amelia stared at her feet. "In the pictures of fairytales they always show people kissing on the mouth. I thought a kiss on the cheek might not be enough. Did it work?" She looked up hopefully. 

"No, of course it didn't work. It was a stupid idea." Zelgadis kicked off his boots violently and flung his cloak over a bedpost. 

"Oh." Amelia more meekly followed suit. 

In the darkness after they had extinguished the lamp and crawled into bed, Zel was still blushing. He had never been kissed by a girl before. 

Across the room, Amelia smiled in determination. That had been the first time she had ever kissed a man. She swore it wouldn't be the last. 

* * *

"I found out where the one restaurant in town is. Amelia, did you hear me? I said that I found a restaurant." 

"And I found a magic store." 

"A magic store? In this tiny village?" 

Zelgadis looked over Amelia's shoulder. Sure enough, there was a sign in the window. 

**Wyrg's Magic Shop**   
Spells and Counter Spells  
Ancient Languages  
Magical Artifacts

"Ancient languages," Zelgadis read thoughtfully. "I wonder if he would be able to decipher that book." 

"What book?" 

"The one from the temple we stayed at while you were sick." 

"Oh, I'd forgotten about that book! Let's show it to him." 

Zelgadis walked into the shop. Amelia followed him. The inside of the shop looked like a typical magic shop. The walls were covered with shelves and the shelves were covered with strange jars, pots, rods and other ominous-looking things. It was a rather small room and most of the artifacts were dusty. Zelgadis stepped up to the counter at the far end of the room and knocked on its wooden top. 

"Coming!" called a voice from somewhere else in the building. Zelgadis' ears detected clattering and rustling followed by footsteps. A small man with thick glasses and an inoffensive expression entered the shop from a door behind the counter. "Sorry, I was just washing the breakfast dishes," he was saying as he entered, still wiping his hands on a towel. 

He looked startled upon seeing his customers. "Strangers! Well, what can I do for you?" 

Zelgadis placed the book down on the counter. "I came into possession of this book a few months ago but I have not been able to read it. Do you know what language it is in?" 

Wyrg immediately grabbed the book and started leafing through the pages. "Fascinating! This is a very ancient language. I believe it may be one the Ryozoku used centuries before the last Mazoku War. I have never seen this exact script before but it is similar to one I encountered several years ago on an ancient tablet." 

Zelgadis and Amelia exchanged glances. Unless this man was a complete fraud, they had come to exactly the right place. 

"Can you decipher it?" Zelgadis asked. 

"Not immediately. Give me a day and I'll see what I can do." The man's tone was distracted. His eyes hadn't left the book once since he'd opened it. 

"Then we'll come back at this time tomorrow?" 

"Yes, yes. That would be fine." Wyrg was already wandering back into his house, leaving his forgotten dishcloth on the counter. 

"Well," Zelgadis said with a shrug as they left the store. "It seems we're stuck here for another day. Is there anything you want to do?" 

Amelia grinned predatorily. "Eat lunch!" 

* * *

"Cherry blossoms falling. Warm April showers," Amelia sang. She was sitting on top of the village fountain, trailing her fingers in the water and watching the clouds go by. 

"Amelia, will you get down from there?" Zelgadis asked in annoyance. 

Amelia quickly sat up. "_There_ you are! Where were you?" 

"I got you a present." 

"Really?" Amelia dove off the fountain, flipped over in the air and landed in front of Zel. "What is it?" 

Zelgadis just stared at her, stunned that she had managed to perform an acrobatic feat without landing on her face for once. 

"What is it?" Amelia repeated, shaking his shoulder. 

Zel snapped out of it. "Here." He pushed a handful of cloth into her hands. 

Amelia unfolded it. "Gloves?" She tried them on. "They fit perfectly. Thank you!" 

Zelgadis took one look at the hearts in her eyes and panicked. "They're to cover up the ring," he explained hastily. 

"Oh." Amelia looked down at her hand as if she had forgotten the ring was there. The hearts faded away but her smile didn't. "They're still lovely. Thank you." 

"Uh. Don't mention it." 

"Now I'll find a present for you! Wait here." 

She vanished into one of the shops. Zelgadis sighed and sat down on the edge of the fountain. After a few minutes, he pulled out a book and started reading. After a few hours, he grabbed the princess on her way from one shop to another. 

"Are you almost finished? The sun's starting to set." 

"Um, almost," she replied. "You go ahead to the restaurant. I'll meet you there." 

Zelgadis sighed and tucked his book back into his pocket. 

* * *

A man sat down at Zelgadis' table. Zel glanced up in surprise. 

"Remember me?" the man asked, "We worked together a few times when Rezo was still alive." 

"Zane. Yes, I do remember you." 

"How many years has it been? Two? Three?" 

"Nearly four now." 

"Wow, it doesn't seem that long. Say, I heard that Rezo died but I never found out the details. Do you know what happened to him?" 

"He summoned Ruby Eye Shabranigdo into his own body," Zelgadis said tersely. It had not been a pleasant moment. 

Zane whistled. "I knew that he wasn't the saint people seem to think, but still...what possessed him to summon the dark lord above all other dark lords? I assume that the 'into his own body' part was a mistake." 

Zelgadis nodded. "It turned out that he had Shabranigdo sealed into his eyes. When he opened them..." 

Zane winced in sympathy. 

"Actually," Zelgadis continued on a different topic, "Shabranigdo isn't the dark lord above all other dark lords. He is merely the greatest dark lord in this world. The lord above all dark lords, and gods too, is the Lord of Nightmares." 

Zane looked torn between awe and skepticism. "How do you know that?" 

"I traveled for awhile with Lina Inverse. She uses some spells that call upon the Lord of Nightmares." 

"Lina Inverse? The one they call 'the Bandit Killer' and 'the Enemy of All Who Live'?" 

Zelgadis sighed. "Yes, that Lina Inverse. She's not as bad as her reputation. Almost, but not quite." 

"Is she cute?" 

Zelgadis choked, but after a moment he answered, "Yes, in an irresponsible, insanely destructive sort of way." 

"Do you really dislike her or are you just jealous because she dumped you for another man?" 

"I don't dislike her, and she was with the other man from the beginning." 

"You're kidding. 'The Enemy of All Who Live' has a lover?" 

"No. She has a partner with whom she travels. They are not lovers, although I have never been able to figure out why not." 

"It sounds complicated. Would I know the man?" 

Zelgadis shrugged. "His name is Gourry Gabriev. He used to own the Sword of Light." 

"The sword that slew the Demonbeast Zannafar? That Sword of Light?" 

"Yes." 

"I thought that sword vanished off the face of the earth long ago!" 

"No, just last year." 

"What happened?" 

"It's a long story." 

"Oh. But back to the cute girls. If Lina Inverse wasn't your love interest, who was?" 

Zelgadis stared at him in disbelief. "What makes you think I had one?" 

"Did you?" 

Zelgadis was very tempted to say, 'None of your business,' but he didn't. There was something about Zane that made people talk to him. That talent had been very useful during the search for the Philosopher's Stone. Now it made Zelgadis reply, "There was one girl who thought she was in love with me, a justice-maniac named Amelia." 

"Did you love her?" 

"Of course not. She was obviously crazy." 

"Why?" 

"She thinks I look 'cool' as a chimera and, if that isn't reason enough for you, her hobby is standing in trees and ranting about justice." 

"Is she cute?" 

"...Yes, in a juvenile sort of way." 

"Juvenile?" 

"She was still a child when I met her." 

"How old is she now?" 

"Sixteen." 

Zane stared at him. "Let me get this straight. There is a cute sixteen-year-old girl out there somewhere who loves you despite the fact that you are a chimera and you let her get away? Maybe you're the one who's crazy." 

Zelgadis smiled, "Maybe." 

"Zelgadis, old friend, I'll tell you what to do. You march yourself straight to - where does she live?" 

"Seyruun." 

"...Seyruun and ask her to marry you. Wait, I think I've heard of some Amelia connected with Seyruun." 

"Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun?" 

"Amelia Wil Tesla _Seyruun_? A member of the royal family?" 

"The daughter of Crown Prince Philionel." 

"And she's probably an only child, isn't she?" 

"No, but her sister ran away from home several years ago and hasn't been seen since." 

"Oh yes, I remember hearing about that. And is this princess your Amelia?" 

"She is the Amelia I traveled with." 

"Gods preserve us! You could have married a princess and become the future ruler of one of the most powerful kingdoms in the world, and you passed that up just because the girl likes speechmaking?" 

"Why would I want to marry a princess or rule Seyruun? I just want to be human again." 

"Please tell me that she has some other flaw, that she's stupid or spiteful or..." 

"Judge for yourself. Here she comes." 

Amelia walked across the room towards them. "I'm sorry I took so long, Zelgadis-sama, but I found you a wonderful present!" She noticed Zane. "Am I interrupting something?" 

"This is Zane. We both used to work for Rezo," Zelgadis introduced, "Zane, this is Amelia. She's helping me look for my cure." 

Amelia smiled politely "Pleased to meet you." She headed toward the fireplace to get a bowl of stew. 

Zane stared at after her in shock. "Zelgadis, she's beautiful. Why didn't you tell me that? And why didn't you tell me she's still traveling with you?" 

"You didn't ask." 

"Is Lina Inverse here too?" 

"No, don't worry." 

Zane looked relieved. "Now I know you're crazy. That girl is beautiful, young, charming, aristocratic..." 

"She's a powerful sorceress too," Zelgadis added. 

Zane shook his head in disbelief. "What more are you looking for? I would marry her like that," he snapped his fingers, "if she would take me." 

Zelgadis winced. Why did this guy keep bringing up the subject of marriage? "Maybe if I was human. I can't ask any girl to marry a hideous chimera like me," he said lightly. 

"If she doesn't care, why should you?" 

Then Amelia returned and the conversation turned to the less intimate topic of Zelgadis' present. It turned out to be a pair of pliers that could also be used as wire cutters and a can of metal polish. "For your hair," Amelia explained, glowing with pride. 

"Uh, thanks," Zelgadis managed. 

"Which way are you two going?" Zane asked curiously. 

"North," Amelia replied just as Zelgadis said, "East." They exchanged a look. 

"North-east," Amelia compromised, "toward, um..." 

"Toward the Karatoe Mountains." 

"Right. There's a powerful temple there that we once visited." 

"It was destroyed." 

"But we might still find something useful among the ruins." 

Zelgadis nodded. 

Zane showed no sign that he'd noticed they were making it up on the spot. 

"That's a pity. I'm headed southwest, back toward civilization. I have to get an artifact back to my employer." 

"What is it?" Amelia asked innocently. 

"Sorry, can't talk about it. You know how it is." 

"Oh." 

They chatted for another hour or so until the restaurant began to empty. Then they went their separate ways. Since Zane had already rented the only guestroom in the only inn in town, Zelgadis and Amelia ended up camping just outside the village. 

* * *

Zelgadis woke early the next morning but Amelia must have woken up even earlier. She was nowhere in sight. Zelgadis shrugged, then turned the shrug into a stretch. He wandered over the pool they had camped beside last night and splashed cold water on his face to wake himself up. 

It was a beautiful setting. The shallow, crystal-clear pool was at the foot of a waterfall. The rock was covered with trickles of water, and patches of vividly green moss. Currently, the sunrise was throwing pink and gold reflections on the rock. Sights like this made all the rainy nights and weary days of life on the road worthwhile. Zelgadis leaned back to look at the lightening sky above the cliff. What was that patch of white up near the top of the waterfall? It looked almost like...Amelia's cape! 

"Levitation." Zelgadis flew up to the top of the waterfall without a moment's hesitation. Amelia's body had somehow ended up wedged in the angle between two rocks just to one side of the waterfall itself. She was completely limp. Her eyes, he saw when he flew closer, were closed. What had happened? 

"Amelia!" he shouted. 

To his relief, Amelia yawned and opened her eyes. "Zelgadis-san?" 

"What are you doing up here?" he snapped. 

"I climbed up here to watch the sun rise," she replied mildly. "I must have fallen asleep." 

She started to get to her feet. 

"Don't!" Zel grabbed her before she could fall. 

"It's okay," Amelia said reproachfully. "The rocks are completely stable. I'm not going to fall." 

Zelgadis sheepishly released her. "You shouldn't have climbed up here in the dark. It's dangerous," he said, trying to sound annoyed rather than frightened. "You might have slipped on a wet rock, and then what would I tell your father?" 

Amelia rolled her eyes and levitated down to the ground with exaggerated slowness. 

* * *

The dishcloth was still lying on the counter when Zelgadis and Amelia returned to the magic shop. Zelgadis rang the bell beside it. After a minute, he rang it again. Just as he raised his hand to ring it a third time Wyrg stumbled into the shop, rubbing his eyes. 

"Is it noon already?" the translator asked querulously. He squinted at the bright sunlight pouring in the shop window. "Yes, I suppose it is." 

"What have you found out?" Zelgadis inquired pointedly. 

"Some very interesting things. Come into my workroom and I'll show you." 

The visitors filed around the counter and followed him through a narrow hallway, past a rather dirty kitchen, and down a flight of stairs to the basement. It was a single large room full of magical paraphernalia and mismatched tables, shelves and cupboards. There was a pool of light surrounding one of the tables. When Amelia and Zelgadis got closer they saw that it was cast by a pair of magical lanterns and their book was at the center of it. There were also several other books spread out around it as well as several slates covered in chalked symbols. 

Wyrg tapped the open page of their book. "Look here. I believe this first symbol means 'Lord of Nightmares' or, more literally, 'Lord of Dreams that Terrify.'" 

Zelgadis and Amelia stared at each other wide-eyed. "Lord of Nightmares?" Zel repeated faintly. 

"Yes. These lines form the symbol for 'Lord' and, if I'm not mistaken, this part is the symbols for 'dream' and 'terrify' intertwined. I've never heard of this 'Lord of Nightmares' but he sounds powerful. Look, here is the symbol for Shabranigdo. See, it's an eye with a suggestion of the symbol for red. Well, I'm sure you've seen it plenty of times before. And here is Cephied four symbols later. I haven't been able to work out the symbols in between but they seem to be in the same style." 

Zelgadis tapped the symbol just before Shabranigdo. "I'm almost certain that this one with the lightning bolt is Dark Star." 

"Then this one," Amelia tapped the one in front of Cephied, "must be Volphied. Yes, it looks right although I don't know why." 

"That makes these," Zelgadis pointed to the ones next to Shabranigdo and Dark Star, "the dark lords of the other two worlds, Death Fog and Chaotic Blue." 

Amelia bit her lip. "I don't know the names of the gods of the other two worlds." 

"You two are very good," Wyrg said in amazement. "Can you get any more of it?" 

"Please go on," Zelgadis said. 

"Well, judging by its similarity to the symbol in this text," Wyrg pointed to one of the other books open on the table, "I believe that this word at the end of the line is 'make' or 'create'. So would that make the line 'Shabranigdo and the other mazoku lords and Cephied and the other gods created the Lord of Nightmares'? He must be extraordinary if they all worked together to create him." 

"No," Zelgadis corrected. "The Lord of Nightmares comes first. The line is 'The Lord of Nightmares created Dark Star, Ruby Eye, Death Fog, Chaotic Blue, Volphied, Cephied...and the other gods.'" 

"The Lord of Nightmares created...How do you know that?" the older sorcerer spluttered indignantly. 

"I know something about the Lord of Nightmares," Zelgadis replied with calm smugness. Amelia nodded in agreement. 

"Actually, the rest of the passage makes more sense with that interpretation. The beginning of the next line is 'Monster and God' and the last symbol is 'create' again. I can't make out the symbols in between but I'm pretty sure that the third one, the last one before 'create', is a verb. The second one may be a stylized 'four' or it might be something else entirely." 

"'Mazoku and God, she created them to something the four somethings," Zelgadis murmured. 

"Rule the four worlds, of course!" Amelia exclaimed. 

"Uh, something like that," the translator agreed nervously. "She?" 

"I tend to think of the Lord of Nightmares as female although it is quite possible that such a being has no gender," Zelgadis explained. 

"Uum, right. As you can see, the names of the darklords and gods appear again in these four lines." Wyrg pointed to four lines separated from each other by many lines of symbols. "The last symbol in each of these lines is 'gave'. I believe that it describes which worlds the Lord of Nightmares assigned ('gave') to each dark lord and god pair. On the next page, here, Shabranigdo creates his five generals. I think that the rest of the page is descriptions of them. The third page is Cephied creating his generals. That's as far as I got. Would you like the details of the descriptions? I have some of them partially worked out." 

"No, I get the idea. Can you tell me anything about the rest of the book?" 

"The words 'mazoku' and 'ryozoku' appear frequently. Other than that, not much. If I could have a few weeks with it..." 

"We don't have enough time." 

"We had to camp out by the waterfall last night," Amelia agreed. 

The linguist sighed and ran a longing finger over the page. He closed the book. 

"Oh, there's one other thing you should know." 

"What?" 

"The book generates a strong magic field. You might be able to use it as a magic amplifier and it has some other properties too. Before you ask, I don't think it's because of anything in the binding. If I had to guess, I'd say that the words themselves are generating that power. I can sense faint traces of that power even in the symbols I copied onto this slate." 

"Amazing!" Amelia replied. "Thank you for telling us." 

"Are you sure that you can't let me hold on to the book for just a few more days?" Wyrg pleaded. 

"No," Zelgadis refused. He picked up the book and tucked it back into his cloak pocket. 

The shopkeeper looked from his customer's inhuman face to his large sword and back to his cold blue eyes. Wyrg nodded in resignation. 

"Will this pay for your trouble?" Amelia handed the man a small leather pouch full of valuable magical artifacts. 

He quickly looked them over. "These are rare! Yes, it's generous pay, but my real reward was the chance to look at that manuscript." He sighed again. 

* * *

Outside the shop, Zelgadis allowed himself a rare expression of joy. "It's a Clair Bible. It must be. I've never seen any other book that mentions the Lord of Nightmares, and the magical field he described is a well-known property of the Clair Bible!" 

Amelia was too stunned by his smile to register his words. Zelgadis took her wide-eyed silence as agreement. "I think we should go back to the temple of the Clair Bible with the stone slabs. I've been dreaming about it." He muttered the last sentence with a puzzled frown. 

Now that the dazzling smile had been turned off, Amelia caught up with the conversation. "Me too!" She exclaimed. "I've been dreaming about the Clair Bible a lot, I think, although I can't remember any of my dreams clearly." 

"Then that is our next destination." 

* * *

**_Author's Note:_** I wrote the first section as an out-of-context scene a long time ago and this seemed like the best place to put it. If it seems like it has nothing to do with the rest of the chapter, that's because it doesn't. Still, aren't you glad I put it in? Now you can't say there isn't any mush in this story. (Okay, he just did it for his cure, or so he claims, so I guess it doesn't _really_ count.) 

Other than that, there's not much to say about this chapter. Therefore, this would be a good opportunity for some general comments on the story as a whole. 

I'm trying to be as true as possible to the style of the Slayers anime series. In my mind, the slightly crude animation style translates to minimal physical descriptions of characters and setting. Besides, it's fun leaving the details to your imaginations. For example, exactly what do you think Amelia and Zel's festival costumes looked like? If I was writing CLAMP fanfiction (which I actually have tried), I would put in a lot more references to hair and eyes and flowering trees. 

The romance in this story is Slayers romance. That means that it moves at the speed of glacial drift. Two steps forward, three steps back. Martina and Zangulus excepted of course. Look at the plot and you'll see that I'm trying as hard as I can to throw Amelia and Zelgadis together, but the harder I throw them at each other, the more they bounce off. If you watch very carefully though, their relationship does evolve. A little. Very slowly. I love mush as well as anyone else but it wouldn't be in character, or nearly as much fun, if it was too easy. 

The one area in which I obviously failed to be true to the Slayers style is the lack of world-shaking battles - the lack of any kind of climactic plot at all in fact. For this, I apologize. The story I wanted to tell just doesn't involve any villains. Besides, Zelgadis and Amelia aren't nearly the trouble magnets that Lina and Gourry are. No one is likely to try to recruit them for the mazoku race or ask them to save the world when Lina's not around. They also aren't quite as inclined toward impulsive destruction and mayhem as their fiery-haired friend. I did put in a few fights with bandits and chimeras and the accidental destruction of a couple of villages. I hope that makes up for it a little. 

It's probably unprofessional of me to reveal so many of the thoughts behind the story - if I have to explain what I'm trying to do then I'm not doing it right - but this seemed like the best way to answer all 40+ reviews (!) at once. I read and enjoy every review even though I don't answer them individually. 


	12. A Cure at Last?

**Chapter 12: A Cure at Last?**

"I had forgotten how bad the damage was," Zelgadis said ruefully. 

The doors of the temple of the Clair Bible hung partially off their hinges. One of them had cracked. Instead of opening onto an otherworldly desert, the gap between them showed nothing but a dirty and badly weathered little room. Dead leaves, insect exoskeletons and bird droppings covered the floor. Sunlight showed between the warped boards that made up the walls. 

Amelia slipped through the gap between the doors so that she could look around the room. "There's nothing useful here," she reported. She rejoined Zelgadis outside the building. 

His fists clenched in frustration. "I was so sure we would find something here," he snarled. He pulled the illegible Clair Bible out of his pocket and flipped through the pages, searching for anything that would give him some clue of what to do next. 

"Zelgadis-san, look!" 

He turned to see where she was pointing. A glow had appeared in the broken doorway. As he stepped closer, it intensified. The startled young people saw a transparent desert overlaying the view of the abandoned room. By the time Zelgadis reached the doorframe, the desert and the room seemed equally real. 

Without warning, Amelia slipped between the doors again. 

"Amelia, wait!" Zelgadis ran after her. 

As soon as they were inside, the desert seemed completely solid. It stretched away as far as the eye could see in all directions. The sun overhead beat down with all the heat of a real sun. 

"Come on." Amelia set out in a leftwards direction. 

"Why that way?" 

"Why not?" 

Zelgadis shrugged and followed her. 

An hour or two later, just when their water bottles were starting to run low, Amelia pointed to a smudge on the horizon. "Look!" 

"I see it." 

It turned out to be a region of fallen stone slabs. At first there were just a few nearly-vertical slabs leaning outward, but as they walked further into the region more and more of the slabs had been knocked over completely. Many of them were broken. 

"This must be where we fought Gaav," Amelia commented. 

Zelgadis nodded. 

"Yes, the Demon Dragon King Gaav did this," a voice behind them said sadly. 

The travelers spun around to find a tiny, shriveled old woman with long, pointed ears standing on one of the stone slabs. "Auntie Aqua!" they exclaimed together. 

"Oh my, I recognize you! You came here before with that nice orange-haired girl and her swordsman, didn't you?" 

"Yes, we did." 

"Ah. And what are you looking for this time?" 

"We're trying to find Zelgadis-san's cure." 

Auntie Aqua focused piercing black eyes on the chimera's face. "Hmm." 

"Can you help me?" Zelgadis asked tensely. 

"Yes, I think so." 

The young man's face lit up in an ecstasy of fearful hope. 

Auntie Aqua looked him over slowly from hair to boots. "Yes, I think I can help you," she repeated. "You seem to be fully human, as well as fully demonic and fully golemic. Whoever did this to you managed to combine three complete beings into one, an impressive piece of work." 

Zelgadis scowled. He was tired of hearing the curse that had destroyed his life called 'impressive.' 

Auntie Aqua continued. "All you need to do is separate the three parts again." 

"How do we do that?" Zelgadis asked intently. 

"The same way we removed the extra body parts from Diol's chimeras, of course!" Amelia answered. 

Auntie Aqua looked puzzled. "How?" 

With Amelia's prodding, Zelgadis described his spell to the old woman. 

"I see. Yes, that should work as well as any of the other methods I was going to suggest." 

Zelgadis wasn't sure whether to feel flattered or cheated. "I already tried it. It didn't work." 

"Maybe you just didn't have enough power," Auntie Aqua smiled her warm but enigmatic smile. "Come with me." 

"How did you manage to survive, Auntie?" Amelia asked as the threesome walked further into the area of destruction. "I thought Gaav killed you." 

"Oh, he did, a long time ago." 

"I meant that I thought he had destroyed you, Auntie, your ghost-self." 

Auntie Aqua laughed. "I knew what you meant. I was just teasing you." She turned serious. "He almost did. I was only saved by the infinite nature of this place. This temple was intended to be an absolutely complete copy of the Clair Bible. It ended up holding an infinite number of copies of the same information written at increasing levels of detail. Even though this patch of destruction stretches further than you could walk in two days, I still have all my memories. As long as this temple remains, so will I." 

"Yet another proof that justice always triumphs in the end!" Amelia proclaimed, shooting a meaningful glance at Zelgadis, which he ignored. 

"Oh, I didn't triumph completely. I lost a lot of power in that fight. That is why I have been trying to collect Clair Bible manuscripts. They hold all that is left of my power. 

"Ah, this is a good place!" Auntie Aqua pointed to an unbroken stone slab lying nearly horizontal on top of the remains of other slabs. "Lie down there, young man." 

Zelgadis obeyed. 

The old woman studied him shrewdly. "Are you sure this is what you want? You will be much weaker as a human." 

"I won't lie to you. There have been times when I was very glad of my invulnerable skin. Chimeric speed and strength have been useful too. However, I would much rather have merely human speed and strength earned honestly by my own effort, and human vulnerability is a price I'm willing to pay for human normality." 

"What about your enhanced senses?" Amelia asked. 

"Superhuman hearing has never been very useful. Mostly I just hear things I would rather not, like the people in the inn room next to mine or the sheer volume of a dragonslave. My sense of touch is much weaker than a human's. My other senses are the same as they always were." 

"Your eyesight isn't magically enhanced?" Amelia asked incredulously. 

Zelgadis allowed himself a faint, proud smile. "No." 

Suddenly Amelia's expression changed. She stared at Zelgadis with an intensity that made him uncomfortable. "Why are you looking at me like that?" Zel snapped. 

"I'm memorizing your face. If this works, I may never see it again." 

"You'll see my true face." He looked into her eyes with an expression that matched hers in intensity. "Amelia, you see me as a chimera, don't you? A chimera you like, perhaps -- an ally and friend -- but still someone fundamentally non-human. _That is not who I am._ I used to be as human and as normal as you. I would give anything to be that person again. I don't care how much power I lose as long as it means that I will no longer be a freak." 

Moved to tears, Amelia hugged him. 

Auntie Aqua looked them over with raised eyebrows. "Oh my," she chuckled to herself. She waited for them to release each other before she said, "Very well. Shall we begin?" 

"Yes." Zelgadis and Amelia waited expectantly. 

"Why are you looking at me? You are the one who's going to perform the spell, girl. I'm just an old ghost without much power left." 

"Me?" Amelia looked scared for a moment, but she rose to the challenge. "Okay!" 

Zelgadis eyed her warily as he lay back on the stone slab. She was frowning cutely in concentration. As his eyes slid shut, he prayed with every shred of his tormented soul that her face was the last image he would see with chimeric eyes. 

"Sleep," Amelia cast more intensely than she had ever before cast a sleep spell on a single person. She made sure the spell spread though every pore of his body so that all his component parts would be unconscious. She knelt down beside her victim and stroked his stone cheek. "Alright, what now?" 

"Seek out the essences of his three parts," Auntie Aqua reminded her. 

Amelia nodded and probed the still body with her magical senses. "The parts are too well blended. I can't find an edge anywhere! He just feels like Zelgadis-san." 

"Calm down. Now seek out the human essence in him. You know what humanity feels like. Don't think of him as Zelgadis-san. Just seek out the humanity." 

Amelia studied the prone body again. What felt human? It all felt like one essence. She narrowed her gaze to one patch of skin. That was easier for her mind to encompass. She tasted the essence. What felt human? That warmth was human, that softness, that temper. That slippery flicker was not human, nor was that inert weight. She gathered all the characteristics that felt human into her grasp. 

"Is this right?" 

"It's a good start," Auntie Aqua told her kindly. "Why don't we start with the golem instead? It's simpler and it doesn't matter if you damage it. A golem's essence feels like this." She sent the feeling straight into Amelia's mind. 

Amelia shook off her discouragement and started again. This time she sought out the dried-clay feeling of golem. She tried to pull it out of the body but it resisted her. Then Auntie Aqua put a hand on Amelia's arm and suddenly she had ten times as much power. The golem essence came free in a small shower of dust, leaving behind a patch of soft blue skin. Amelia repeated the process on another, larger patch of skin. It was easier now that she knew what she was doing. Then she did it again, and again. Gradually a pile of dust and increasingly large fragments of clay built up around Zelgadis. 

"You care about him a lot, don't you?" Auntie Aqua said when the two women stopped for a short rest. 

Amelia smiled down at the stony face. "I love him." 

Auntie Aqua blinked. That confession had certainly been easier to get than she expected. 

"At least, I think I love him," Amelia continued, looking up at Auntie Aqua. "I always believed that love is a pure and noble emotion, like philanthropy. Love is seeing someone and knowing that you belong together forever! Love is being willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of your beloved!" Her poses collapsed. "What I feel for Zelgadis-san isn't like that at all." 

"What is it like?" 

"Fear. Embarrassment. Sometimes even jealousy. He's nothing like the kind of hero I expected to fall in love with either. When I was young, I was in love with Roderick the Bold, Sir Robin the Brave and, briefly, King Peter the Good. They were true allies of justice! But falling in love with a real person is very different from falling in love with a character in a history book. Zelgadis-san isn't always noble and kind. In fact, sometimes he's really annoying! But I like him...a lot. Just being near him makes me happy, even if we're in an awful situation. My heart aches when I see him suffering. That is why I would do anything -- well, anything that isn't unjust -- to cure him. I don't know if that's love, but I can't think of what else it could be." 

"Love is a lot messier than storytellers make it out to be. It hurts, but it's usually worth it in the end." 

Amelia smiled uncertainly, torn between an enthusiastic declamation on the glory of Love and her own feelings of doubt. 

"What kind of a person is he?" Auntie Aqua asked. 

"He's the most honorable person I know," Amelia said simply. "He puts too much value on loyalty to employers and not enough on justice and friendship, but I admire his dedication to his ideals. He can act selfish sometimes, but he has always been willing to sacrifice his search for a cure and even his life in order to defeat dangerous villains. He doesn't help people with smaller problems unless I remind him but, once something forces him to pay attention to people in need, he works hard to help them. He really does care about other people. And he's saved my life more than once. He's a good person. He doesn't like it when I call him an ally of justice, but he really is one. He's a hero!" 

Auntie Aqua smiled knowingly. "I'm glad to hear that he's worth all this effort." 

"Everyone deserves a chance at happiness, especially people who have been unjustly treated like Zelgadis-san." 

Amelia returned to pulling golem pieces out of her friend. Before long, Zelgadis was half-human, half-demonic and no part golem. Amelia paused to admire her handiwork. 

Zelgadis still had blue skin, pointy ears and a thick lock of purplish hair falling over his right eye, but the skin was smooth and rubbery, the inset stones were gone and the hair had lost its metallic sheen and hardness. He had also grown short talons and fangs. He gave off an indefinable air of evil. 

"You'd better get back to work before that demon wakes up. They don't sleep naturally so your sleep spell won't hold it much longer," Auntie Aqua warned. 

Amelia got back to work. It was easier to separate demon from human now that there were only two natures to think about. Amelia gathered all the demon essence in the left arm and yanked it out of Zel's body. Zel's hand turned pink but the demon arm remained attached to the body. It just stretched and, as soon as Amelia loosened her grip on it, rejoined the human arm. The arm convulsed briefly and regained its blue color. 

"What happened?" Amelia asked in bewilderment. 

"Hmm. You'll have to take the demon out in one piece, I think," Auntie Aqua replied. 

Amelia's eyes widened. She couldn't do that much at once! Well, she could try. 

On her second try, she got both arms and most of the chest. On the next try, she got slightly more than that. She did finally manage to get the demon out with the help of Auntie Aqua and an exorcism spell. 

The demon floated in the air over its former body, glaring at Amelia with slanted yellow eyes. It was thoroughly enraged by being repeatedly yanked on and finally evicted from its cozy home. 

"How dare you?" the demon hissed. "How dare you separate us? He is _mine_ as long as he lives. Rezo promised him to me. _How dare_ you destroy Rezo's masterpiece?" 

Amelia sprang to her feet, pointing dramatically at the demon. "Zelgadis-san wants to be human so, in the name of Love and Friendship, I will do everything in my power to make him human again! You will not stop me." She began chanting, enjoying the feeling of a much more familiar spell than the ones she had been casting recently. 

The demon tried to dive back into Zelgadis' body but Auntie Aqua threw a protective barrier over it and the demon bounced off. 

"...Let the power in my soul be called forth from the infinite. Ra Tilt!" 

The demon shrieked and dissolved like a shadow caught in a bright light. 

"Victory!" Amelia shouted. 

Then she cast her most powerful healing spell on the fragile-looking body nestled amidst the heaps of broken clay. There was no telling what damage ripping away two-thirds of his body might have done. 

"My, he's a handsome one, isn't he?" Auntie Aqua remarked. "Who would have known that he had such a sweet face under all that stone?" 

Amelia nodded, wide-eyed. She had often tried to picture what Zelgadis would look like without his curse. She had even tried to transform him to fit that image. She had occasionally managed to get the eyes almost right, or the line of his jaw, or his hair, but she had never been able to put all the pieces together well enough to see what sort of an impression he would give. Now she knew. 

He looked a little bit like Rezo, especially with his eyes shut. His hair and general cast of features were similar, although no one would mistake him for the Red Priest. His features were recognizably the same ones he had had as a chimera, but the absence of rocks imbedded in his skin and the presence of eyebrows made a huge difference. 

"Shall we wake him up?" Auntie Aqua prompted. 

Amelia nodded again and removed the sleep spell without once taking her eyes off the strange-familiar face of her friend. She gently brushed a thick lock of soft, dark hair out of his eyes and he awoke. 

Zelgadis savored the sweetest sensation he had experienced in years: something soft was brushing against his face and he could _feel_ it. He opened his eyes. Amelia's face loomed above him with an odd expression. Was that fear, or wonderment? 

"Did it...did it work?" Zelgadis asked apprehensively. 

Amelia broke into a grin. "Yes," she confirmed. 

Zel lifted his hands in front of his face. They were pink and smooth and _human_. He sat up, feeling strangely heavy and light at the same time. He touched his hair. It was soft. He stroked his cheek and it was soft too. 

"I'm human!" he exclaimed in amazement and delight, still hardly daring to believe it. 

Amelia impulsively hugged him. Zelgadis returned her embrace, gingerly at first, then -- when he realized that he was in no danger of crushing her -- with all the force of his joy. 

Sensation overwhelmed him. A day ago this embrace would have felt to him like a faint pressure. Now he could feel her hair against his cheek and her breath on his neck. He could feel the individual threads in his clothing where she pressed it against his skin. He could feel the shape of her body against his chest. He blushed and pulled back slightly, noticing as his hands slid off her back that there was a small tear in her cape. 

"Do you...have a mirror?" he asked tentatively, his voice sounding faint and dull in his human ears. 

"I think so," she replied indistinctly, searching her cape. She produced a mirror fragment from a concealed pocket and handed it to him. 

The mirror was tiny and none too clean, but it was enough to show Zelgadis that his face was just as he remembered it. He smiled and then grinned and then laughed with joy. After a moment of surprise -- Zelgadis _never_ laughed -- Amelia smiled back at him. A moment of perfect happiness stretched out between them. 

Zel's stomach growled. He put a hand to it in surprise. "I feel hungry," he said with amazement. "I haven't felt hungry since the night I became a chimera." 

"Would you like to go back to the village and get something to eat then?" Amelia suggested. She was almost as hungry as he was. After all, she had been the one doing all the work. 

Zelgadis stumbled to his feet, sending clay dust flying. This body moved nearly the same way as his chimeric one. He handed the mirror back to Amelia with a grave, "Thank you." 

Auntie Aqua cleared her throat. The young people jumped. The old dragon god's eyes twinkled with laughter. "I have a favor to ask of you." 

"Yes?" 

"Would you leave that Clair Bible you brought with you in the outside temple when you leave? If it is there, I will be able to open the door again." 

Zelgadis pulled the ornately bound book out of his pocket and looked at it regretfully. He badly wanted to keep it, but he could deny nothing to the person who had just given him back his humanity. He nodded. 

"Please protect it and hide it well. If someone like that priest you used to travel with finds it, he will surely destroy it." 

"We'll do that." 

"Thank you." Auntie Aqua looked thoughtfully back and forth between the transformed young man and the girl who had so recently declared her love for him. She faded away with a satisfied smile. 

The two humans started back toward the temple door and their own world. After a minute, Zelgadis paused to empty the gravel out of his boots. Under the desert sun, his hair shone a rich, dark purple. 

They paused outside the temple long enough to wrap their Clair Bible in layers of preservation and protection spells and slide it deep into a crack between two foundation stones before they dashed down the mountain to find lunch. 

* * *

After consuming more food than any two people in that town had eaten at sitting since the last time Lina and Gourry had passed through the region, they went shopping. Usually Zelgadis would have had little patience for all the shops Amelia dragged him through and all the clothes she made him try on, but right now he was too happy to object to anything. He just savored the textures of the fabrics and stared adoringly at his own reflection in every mirror. 

Zelgadis had chosen his old clothes for their ability to survive his abrasive skin. They had all the warmth and softness of sailcloth. By the end of the day, Amelia had him outfitted with a soft purple shirt a few shades lighter than his hair, a pair of dust-coloured pants that looked a lot like his old ones but felt much nicer, and a new pair of fingerless gloves. He also got a haircut that left his hair much less ragged, although only slightly shorter. Wire hair had not been easy to keep trimmed. They had ordered boots and armor for him too, but those wouldn't be ready for a day or two because they had to be made to fit. The only piece of his old clothing he was keeping was his cape, which was currently at the laundry being thoroughly cleaned and mended. 

Amelia got a new outfit too. While the shoemaker's apprentice had been measuring Zelgadis' feet for new boots, the shoemaker had offered Amelia a pair of boots for only an extra five silver pieces. A wandering adventurer had ordered the boots from him many months ago but never came back to claim them. Right now they were just taking up space in his storeroom. Would Amelia like to try them on? Amelia would. 

The boots were made of soft, light-blue leather cut in a dashing style fit for a true heroine, and they fit. Amelia gave her once beautiful but now scuffed and leaky green boots one last, fond glance. Then she bought the blue boots without a second thought. The only problem was that trying on the boots had made her realize just how shabby the rest of her costume was. The ragged cuffs of her pants ended well above her ankles, as they had since the beginning of the quest. Her tunic and pants were both covered with snags, minor scorch marks and ingrained dirt. Even her socks were mud-stained. As much as she loved her costume (and she had been wearing variations of it since she was a tiny child), she had to admit that it was worn out. 

Amelia managed to find white pants in her size without too much trouble, but she could not find an exact match for her old tunic. She had to settle for one that was much less poofy and completely lacking in pink ribbons. It felt wrong, but the protection spells woven into it were of good quality and Zelgadis liked it. His exact words, when she demanded his opinion, had been, "You look older somehow." Amelia kept her cape, her magic amplifying jewelry and the gloves that Zelgadis had given her. 

They returned to their inn that night looking and feeling like new people. Zelgadis spent the evening in the bathhouse soaking that last of the stone dust out of his skin. 

* * *

The next day they celebrated the end of the quest by just relaxing and having fun. After picking up Zel's new boots, they spent the morning seeing what few sights there were to see in the town. They sampled the local cuisine. They saw a play. They walked along the riverbank, talking. 

Zelgadis had never been happier. The voice in his mind that constantly whispered, "You are a freak. No one could possibly like you. You deserve to suffer," was gone. The heavy, unyielding stone that had made him feel physically and emotionally numb was gone. He felt more alive than he had in years. 

Amelia was also very happy. She rejoiced at seeing Zelgadis so happy and she was proud of successfully completing the quest. However, she was not quite at ease with her companion. He didn't look or act like the Zelgadis she knew -- he smiled too much and hadn't been more than mildly sarcastic all day -- but his voice was still the same soft, deep voice she loved, and his expressions, except for the grins, were exactly the way she remembered them. The mixture of strangeness and familiarity was disconcerting. Still, she had to admit that she was enjoying the company of this warm, courteous, startlingly familiar stranger. 

That night, to Amelia's utter astonishment, they went dancing. It had been Zelgadis' idea. It turned out that "I don't dance" had not meant "I can't." They crawled into their beds well after sunset, exhausted by an absolutely wonderful day. 

Over breakfast the next morning Zelgadis said, "It's time to get serious." 

"What do you mean?" 

"We've found my cure. What do we do now?" 

"I could go home to Seyruun," Amelia suggested without any enthusiasm. "You could come with me," she added with much more. 

"No, I think I'll travel awhile longer. There's not much work for freelance mercenaries in Seyruun." 

"Then I'll come with you!" Amelia struck a dramatic pose. "Together we will continue to fight the forces of evil and protect innocent people from injustice!" 

Zel gave her a long, steady look. 

"But where shall we go? What shall we seek?" Amelia asked, pose abandoned. 

"Let's head south, since most things are south of here, and I'm sure something will turn up. Something always does." 

"What a great idea!" 

"If my armor's ready we can leave this morning." 

Amelia sighed. She had enjoyed the last two days very much. She would have like the fun to last a little longer. Still, they had seen and done everything there was to see and do in this town. Zelgadis was right; it was time to move on. 

The armor was ready. It consisted of a lightweight breastplate, wrist guards and shin guards, all black. Amelia had protested that black was a bad-guy color but Zelgadis liked black armor. He had considered getting a metal headband as well, but the sight of his reflection wearing it had called up disturbing memories of Kopii Rezo. 

By the time the armor had been adjusted to fit Zelgadis perfectly it was almost noon. Amelia and Zel ate lunch in town and then hit the road. 

* * *

**_Author's Note:_**Yay! Zel finally got his cure! How many of you thought that I would actually go through with it? 

There are people (and not a few of them) who think that a human Zelgadis just wouldn't be Zelgadis, or at least wouldn't be nearly as attractive/cool. I disagree. What makes him attractive/cool is mostly his personality and sense of style. His personality is selfish, antisocial, moody and pessimistic - not the most attractive personality for someone you have to live with but one that tends to make anime characters very popular. Personally, I like him because his personality is the closest to mine of all the Slayers characters. His style is just as melodramatic as Amelia's but more villainous, and he can do the leaping-from-high-places thing right. Take a look at the first episode of NEXT if you don't understand what I mean. I think that if he was human he would bear an uncanny resemblance to Van of Escaflone, and Van certainly doesn't loose any coolness by being human. A human Zelgadis would still be welcome in the Slayers group (although he might not be able to fight in quite such a high league) and he would still make a valuable contribution to the group dynamic. The silliness is so much more fun when it's offending his dignity! He is also often a voice of reason to balance out the extreme irrationality of some of the party members. Of course, he can be just as irrational and silly as any of the others, especially when in hot pursuit of his cure. He just regrets it more afterward. 

That brings me back to the subject of his cure. I prefer to believe that he's telling the truth when he says how much he hates being a chimera. We've all seen times when he gets a major kick out of being invulnerable, but I think he really would be willing to give it up for the sake of humanity (acquiring it for himself, I mean, not in the sense of 'sacrifice for the greater good'). Finding his cure _would_ make him deliriously happy, at least for awhile. You'll have to wait and see whether or not his happiness continues once he and Amelia are forced to deal with harsh reality again in the chapters to come. 


	13. A Different Sort of Employment

**Chapter 13: A Different Sort of Employment**

They found their new employment three days further south. 

A caravan was being attacked by bandits. Amelia immediately climbed on top of one of the wagons to tell the bandits what she thought of their evil ways. Zelgadis picked off several of the bandits with flare arrows while they were distracted. The flare arrows were much weaker than usual and tired him surprisingly quickly, but they were effective. A half-dozen singed bandits lay sprawled on the ground before the rest spotted him. Zelgadis drew his sword. 

Zel's form was terrible. He had to use both hands to control the sword that he used to wield effortlessly with one. His blows were too weak, his timing was off, and there were huge holes in his defense. The bandit he was fighting managed to slash open his arm. It was humiliating, not to mention painful. If Amelia and the caravan guards hadn't taken care of the rest of the bandits, Zelgadis would have been in trouble. He couldn't believe it. How could he possibly be a worse swordsman than a _bandit_? 

"Victory!" Amelia exclaimed, making a cute 'v' sign with her fingers. Then she noticed the way Zelgadis was clutching his arm. She leapt off the wagon and rushed over to him. "Zelgadis-sama! Are you hurt?" She was casting Recovery almost before he uncovered the wound. 

Zel wanted to protest that he could do it himself but the unaccustomed pain was making it hard for him to concentrate. "I hadn't realized how dependent I had become on chimeric strength, speed and invulnerability," he ruefully admitted. 

"I'm sure you'll get your skill back with practice," Amelia replied sympathetically, "You just have to get used to being human again." 

Zelgadis nodded. 

One of the members of the caravan approached them. He looked like any of the others but, judging from his air of authority, he was probably the leader. "I'm Hallas Letzu, the owner of this caravan. I would like to thank you. Things were looking bad for us before you showed up." 

"Stomping out injustice wherever we find it is our pleasure," Amelia assured him. Then she caught Zelgadis' look. "Mine, anyway," she amended. 

"Let me be blunt," the merchant continued, "Is there any chance I can hire you? I know you mages don't like to be tied down to a caravan, but I'll pay well." 

Zelgadis glanced over at Amelia. "Give us a minute to discuss your offer." 

The man walked just out of earshot. 

"We could use the money," Amelia admitted. Zel's new equipment had been expensive, although neither of them begrudged the cost. 

Zelgadis nodded. "This would be a good opportunity for me to fix my sword work too. Some of those caravan guards aren't too bad." 

"These people need our help." 

"We're going in that direction anyway." 

A thoughtful pause. "So we take the job?" 

"Yes," Zelgadis called to the caravan owner, "We accept your offer." 

"Excellent! I'm paying my men six silver a day. Would you take twelve each? It's three weeks to Sairaag and after that we're heading toward Seyruun by way of all the smaller cities in between." 

Amelia and Zelgadis exchanged glances. It wasn't much money by the standards they were used to, but it was good pay for caravan guards. Zelgadis replied for them, "That sounds fine." 

"Excellent, excellent! You can start by helping us get the wagons reloaded so we can get out of here before those bandits recover." 

Besides Zelgadis and Amelia, there were six caravan members, who all introduced themselves as soon as the carts were moving again. Hal (as the caravan owner insisted they call him), Geoff, Seymor and Akio were all swordsmen. Yosh was an archer and Tuck used a staff. With the exception of Yosh, who was still very young and excitable, they were all quiet, professional men who gave off a sense of calm competence. Hal and Geoff had grey streaks in their hair. In addition to guarding the caravan from bandits, they were also responsible for taking care of the carthorses, loading and unloading the carts, and doing any other work that might be required. It was a small caravan. 

The caravan members were inclined to be friendly even before Amelia and Zel healed all their injuries. Afterward, they unanimously agreed that the mages were worth every silver piece they were being paid and more. 

* * *

As soon as he finished supper that night, Zelgadis went off to practice swordstrokes. Amelia was washing her dishes in the stream. The caravan master had lent his newest employees the dishes after he discovered, to his great surprise, that they didn't have any of their own. 

"What do you think of them?" Hal asked his comrades. 

"I like them," Yosh piped up. He already had a crush on Amelia. 

"I'm not sure what to think," Geoff said, "They look like starry-eyed kids setting out to seek their fortune, but I'm not sure that's what they are." 

"Of course they're neophytes," Akio said. "Those clothes are brand new. Zel's armor didn't have a scratch on it before this morning." 

"They're both young enough to be fresh out of their hometown, fifteen maybe." Seymor added, "Zel acted like he'd never been in a real fight before and Amy is almost as bad. She must have gotten those speeches out of a bedtime story. They're good fighters, mind you, talented. They just need a little real world experience to teach them what's what." 

Geoff shook his head slowly. "Maybe you're right, but I have a feeling there's more to it than that. Amy's no neophyte, no matter how she dresses, and I don't think Zel is either. I was watching him during the battle since I was too badly injured to keep fighting. The mistakes he made weren't the mistakes of inexperience, unless he was very poorly trained indeed. He only looks sixteen or seventeen but his eyes are twice that old. There's some tragedy in that boy's past, and some secrets too. I think he may surprise us all." 

* * *

Zelgadis did surprise them. He spent every rest stop doing sword drills. He often practiced his swings even while walking beside the rumbling wagons. He got the others to join him for intensive practice sessions in the evenings so that he could test himself against a partner. After sword practice, he would often take Amelia into the forest with him and practice his attack spells on the trees and bushes. Yosh would have been jealous except that the near-constant sounds of explosions made it clear that all they were doing was magic. He had spied on them one night just to make sure. 

Zel seemed driven by the need to improve, and improve he did. Within a week it was clear to everyone that Zelgadis was no neophyte. He was a master swordsman and a very powerful sorcerer who, for some reason, was terribly out of practice. 

More questions were raised the first night Zelgadis and Amelia took their turn at making supper. 

Yosh was on his way back to the campsite when Amelia ran up to him. 

"Yosh-san," she cried, "Give me some of your hair." 

"Wha-what?" he stammered. "Wh-why?" 

"So that our comrades will not have to go hungry!" she proclaimed. "I'm going to catch fish for dinner but my hair is too short to make a good fishing line." 

"Oh. Okay." 

"Great!" 

Amelia carefully plucked a strand of hair from his head. She tied one end of it to a stick and the other to a piece of bent wire. 

It was the sorriest excuse for a fishing rod that Yosh had ever seen. "Do you think you'll actually catch any fish with that?" he asked, trying not to sound as doubtful as he felt. 

Amelia grinned conspiratorially. "Watch." She impaled a caterpillar from a nearby bush on the hook and flung it out into the water. Then she began to croon, "Here, fishy, fishy." 

To Yosh's utter amazement, she got a bite almost immediately. She yanked the fish out of the water with a wild swing of her fishing rod. Yosh grabbed it and managed, with some difficulty, to disentangle the hook from its mouth. 

"You're using a spell, aren't you?" he said in an awestruck tone while still wrestling with the thrashing fish. 

"Yep." Amelia flung her line back into the water. 

"Did you make it up yourself?" 

Amelia shook her head. "A friend taught it to me." 

"Zelgadis?" 

"No, someone we used to travel with, who ate more than anyone else I've ever met." 

"Did you travel together long?" 

"Yes, we traveled all over the world, and even to the New World!" 

Yosh's eyes widened. How long had Amelia and Zelgadis been on the road? 

Five fish later, Yosh finally got up enough courage to ask a question that had been on his mind for days. "Amelia..." 

"Mm?" 

"Zelgadis...is he..." 

"Is he what?" 

"...is he...your...boyfriend?" 

"Oh!" Amelia looked down at her gloved hands wrapped around the fishing pole. "No," she said rather sadly, "he isn't. Why do you ask?" 

"Uh, no reason," Yosh grinned. 

"Oh." Amelia pulled in another fish. 

* * *

The news of Amelia and Zelgadis' former travels caused much comment, but not as much as what happened the next morning. That incident caused so much comment because the caravanners never stopped teasing Zel about it. 

"You need a shave," Hal told Zelgadis bluntly that morning. 

Zelgadis raised a hand to his chin and, to his surprise, found that Hal was right. Facial hair had been the last thing on his mind. He had only just barely started to shave before his transformation - his family tended to mature late in that regard - and he certainly hadn't needed to shave while he was made of stone. The hair must have started growing again sometime in the last week. 

"Do you have a razor I could borrow? I...lost mine," he requested. 

Hal looked at him with amusement, "Sure. Here." He dug into his pouch and pulled out a worn but well-sharpened straight razor. "Need any help?" 

"No, I can handle it," Zelgadis replied coldly. He walked over to the nearby stream. Now how did this go again? He splashed cold water on his face and carefully started scraping. 

Fifteen minutes later he expressionlessly handed the razor back to Hal. He thought he had done a fairly good job, although he was very thankful he could hide his mistakes with Recovery spells. 

"You've never shaved before, have you?" Akio asked with a grin. 

"Yes I have!" 

"You missed a few spots." 

Damn. 

"And don't think we didn't notice you healing yourself." 

Zelgadis stayed silent. 

"How old are you, son?" 

"Twenty-one." 

The men laughed, but kindly. They had all been fifteen once. 

"Whenever you want to borrow my razor again, just ask. I can give you some pointers too." 

Zelgadis walked off into the woods cursing and incinerating thorn bushes. How humiliating! He hoped Amelia hadn't been watching. 

She hadn't, but she soon heard all about it. Then, two days later, she told Zelgadis that of course he had the right to look however he wanted, but she thought he looked better clean-shaven. Zel cringed. 

As soon as they got to the next town, Zel bought himself a razor, a set of dishes and a shaving mirror. 

* * *

"What do you all plan to do when you retire?" Seymor asked to break the silence that had fallen around the campfire. They were passing through one of the many stretches of highway without any inns large enough to hold the caravan. 

"I suppose I'll probably go back to my family's farm," Tuck answered. "They can always use an extra pair of hands." 

"I don't know whether I can afford to retire," Akio said morosely. "As most of you know, I lost all my money a few years ago. It will take me _years_ to save up enough to retire." 

"Especially since money slips through your fingers like water," Seymor laughed. 

Amelia was much more sympathetic, "What happened? How did you lose all your money?" 

"Lina Inverse." 

"_Lina Inverse?_" Zelgadis and Amelia repeated in shocked chorus. 

"Yeah, have you heard of her?" 

"Yes," Zelgadis said tersely. 

"Who hasn't?" Seymor added, "Lina Inverse, the tiny little girl who kills bandits for sport." 

"What did you do to make Lina-san angry with you?" Amelia asked suspiciously. 

"I used to be a bandit when I was younger and more foolish. She annihilated my gang. After that, I decided that banditry was too dangerous so I became the honest mercenary you all know and love." 

"You were a bandit?" Amelia leapt to her feet. "You preyed upon innocent travelers like a mangy wolf lurking in the shadows? Akio-san, I am disappointed in you!" 

Zelgadis leaned over toward Akio. "If you want to live, say, 'I have renounced my evil ways. Please don't hurt me.' Better yet, scream it." 

Akio grinned at the joke. Then he took a good look at Amelia. She was towering over him with the flames of the campfire reflected in her eyes. Those eyes held no mercy. The sight stirred up vivid memories in the ex-bandit's heart of the terrifying Lina Inverse and her equally terrifying partner. 

"I thought you were a good person, but I was deceived. Villain who hides an evil heart under a smiling face, prepare to..." 

"I have renounced my evil ways; please don't hurt me!" Akio screamed. 

Amelia hesitated. 

"I'm an honest mercenary now. I'll never be a bandit again. I swear it! Please don't hurt me, Amelia-san!" 

The fires in Amelia's eyes went out. She smiled happily. "Lina-san is so good at teaching villains the error of their ways! I hope I can be more like her someday." She sat down next to Zelgadis again. Six pairs of eyes stared at her in shock. Zelgadis just sipped his soup and tried to keep a straight face. 

Geoff quickly switched back to a more innocuous subject. "I don't know if I'll retire. All my friends are mercenaries or in related professions. I have no family left. If I do retire, I'll probably find a quiet little cottage in a quiet little town somewhere and spend the rest of my life telling the local children tall tales about my adventures." 

"You'd be good at it," Yosh said with a smile, still casting nervous glances at Amelia. 

"How about you Hal?" Seymor prompted. 

"I don't see any need to ever retire. I might switch to a more stationary job within the family business though, something that lets me sleep with a roof over my head every night." 

The men grinned in agreement. 

"I'm going to slay one of those monsters that has half a kingdom and a princess' hand in marriage as a reward," Yosh announced. "Then I'll be set for life." 

"I don't think any such monsters exist outside of fairytales, lad," Hal told him kindly. 

"I know, but I can dream, can't I?" 

"I think it's a beautiful dream, Yosh-san!" Amelia exclaimed with stars in her eyes. "I want to do that too!" 

"You want half a kingdom and a princess' hand in marriage?" Zelgadis asked mock-innocently. 

"No, of course not. You know I never ask for a reward." 

"What are you going to do when you retire, Zel?" Geoff asked. 

"I honestly haven't thought about it." 

"Amy?" 

"I will fight for justice until the day I die." 

"But you are going home soon, right?" Zelgadis prompted. 

Amelia did not look happy at that reminder. "Unfortunately, the fight for justice cannot always be fought with magic and weapons. Now that Zelgadis-san and I have finished our quest, I have to go home and help my Daddy again." 

"She's his heir so she has to learn the family business," Zelgadis explained. Amelia gave him a funny look but left it at that. 

A drop of water struck Zel's cheek. 

"Alright, Seymor," Akio grinned almost normally. It had taken him this long to regather his nerves after Amelia's attack. "You're the one who started this. I know you're dying to tell us. What are you going to do when you retire?" 

Seymor glowed with self-conscious happiness. "There's this girl, Thyrria - you've probably heard me mention her before. Well, we want to have our own inn. We're working to get the money for it now. She's working as a waitress, and I'm...well, you know. " 

A raindrop hissed in the fire. 

"We've got it all planned out. We'll have four long tables and two, more private, round tables in the back. Our specialty will be chicken stew and Zefilian wine. I've got a friend in Zefilia who promised me he'd give me a special deal on his wine." 

Akio and Hal looked up as they were splattered with water. 

"We're going to have a chicken drumstick and a bunch of grapes on our sign, the drumstick in front with the grapes sort of in the background. Hand me a stick and I'll sketch it for you." 

"Hey, it's starting to rain!" Yosh exclaimed. 

Seymor scowled in disappointment. 

"We'll sleep under the wagons tonight. We're on flat ground so the water shouldn't run under them," the caravan master decided. 

Everyone scrambled for the wagons. Zelgadis, Amelia and Yosh ended up under the last wagon in line. Zel picked it because it was the closest. Amelia followed him out of habit. Yosh was not about to let them spend the night alone together. 

* * *

The air under the wagon was perfectly fresh but it felt stuffy because of the wagon bed looming mere inches above their faces. It was crowded too. The wagon was wide enough to shelter three people, but only barely. Amelia had hard, warm bodies pressed against hers on both sides. Fortunately, they were both people she liked. Outside their small patch of shelter it started to rain in earnest. 

"Does this happen very often?" Zel asked with irritation. 

"No, not _very_ often," Yosh replied. "This is only the third time we've had to sleep under the wagons in a month." 

"Is that all?" Zelgadis sounded more than a little sarcastic. 

Amelia turned to look at him, her face indistinct in the darkness. "It's better than sleeping in the rain." 

Zelgadis remembered the beginning of the trip when she had fallen sick. He shut his mouth. 

After awhile Amelia said, "Good night, Zelgadis-san. Good night, Yosh-san," and appeared to go instantly to sleep. Zelgadis and Yosh threw sardonic glances at her and then pretended to go to sleep too. 

Real sleep escaped Zelgadis for quite awhile. He was not used to being this close to another person, especially not when he was in human form. Amelia was so close to him that he could smell her. She smelled of smoke and sunlight and unwashed human. She was so close that he could feel her breathe. Every time she inhaled, her arm pressed into his side. If he moved at all, he would disturb her. 

He realized that hunger wasn't the only appetite that had returned to his body along with humanity. Unfamiliar sensations were uncurling in his belly. He explored them, delighting in their newness. He felt an odd yearning hunger mixed with a wave of tenderness toward the friend sleeping so innocently beside him. It was a strange feeling, but not at all unpleasant. So, this was lust. Interesting. His curiosity satisfied, he ignored it. 

Eventually, he did fall asleep, lulled by the sound of the rain. 

* * *

Rain poured down all around him. It hissed in the leaves of the trees above. It bounced against the ground, causing tiny splashes in the puddles that had already formed. It trickled down Zel's back and dripped from his soaked hair. The thick lock over his right eye slapped wetly against his cheek with every swing of his too-heavy sword. 

His body ached with weariness and cold. His muscles were so tired that it was an effort just to lift the sword, let alone swing it. Nevertheless, he kept each blow perfectly controlled, perfectly on target. Or tried. The blade bit into the log in front of him again. He had let the sword drop too low, _again_. The boy swore under his breath. He was so _close_, but the needed perfection remained frustratingly out of reach. If only he was stronger... 

As if in response to his thought, a faint jangling sounded among the trees. The boy paused in the act of freeing his sword from the log and lifted his head like an animal sniffing the air for danger. The jangling sounded again, louder, closer. It was a familiar sound, but unexpected and out of place. Zel yanked his sword out of the log and held it up aggressively in front of him. 

A man stepped out into the clearing. He was tall. Despite the rain, his hair and priestly robes were flawlessly ordered. The staff he held in one hand fell silent as he stopped moving. For a long moment the man and the boy watched each other in tacit acknowledgement. 

"Zelgadis," the man said at last. 

"Rezo," the boy returned flatly. "What are you doing here?" He did not lower his sword. The red priest was not a threat, but Zel wanted to make it clear that he was not welcome. 

"I came to offer you the strength you have always craved." 

The boy watched him warily. 

"I am searching for the Philosopher's Stone. If you agree to help me, I will give you all the strength you have ever desired." 

"What exactly are you offering me?" 

"I need a commander to direct my search. I need someone clever like you. Unfortunately, my servants will not obey a commander as young and weak as you are now. I need you to be as strong as you are smart. I will give you superhuman strength, enhanced magical abilities, keener senses and near invulnerability, as well as all the gold, magic and men you need to pursue the search. Do you accept?" The priest was blind but he could still see the hunger in the boy's eyes. 

Zel hesitated. The offer was too good to be true. "You can really make me that strong?" 

The priest smiled benevolently. "You will be transformed beyond recognition." 

The boy hesitated a moment longer, but he had no reason not to trust his ancestor. He nodded. 

Rezo looked delighted. He raised his staff and started chanting. 

And then the pain began. Zel had never experienced such agony. It felt like his body was being ripped apart from the inside out. Even before he watched his hands harden into stone claws, even before he saw the dark lumps pop out all over his body, he knew that he had just made the worst mistake of his life. His sword hit the ground unnoticed as he screamed and screamed and screamed. 

* * *

Amelia was woken up by the sound of moans. Without fully surfacing from unconsciousness, she reached over and hugged Zelgadis. His skin was damp with sweat and invading raindrops. 

"Shh, it's alright. I'm here," she began her soothing mantra. She made out the word 'monster' among the moans. Ah, that dream. "You are not! You're wonderful just the way you are." A memory reached her sleep-addled brain. "You're human now. Human." She stroked his cheek, neck and hair over and over again. It seemed to calm him. "Everything's alright," she mumbled sleepily, "You're cured. Justice triumphed. I love you." She was already fast asleep again. 

Yosh stared into the darkness, unsure what to make of what he had just heard. 

* * *

A ray of sunlight managed to find its way under the cart and stab Zelgadis in the eye. He rolled his head away but the sunbeam was persistent. He tried to cover his eyes with his arm but something had it pinned to the ground. Perhaps the same thing that was weighting down his chest? He cautiously opened one eye and then the other. Amelia was sprawled half on top of him, softly drooling on his shoulder. Zelgadis rolled his eyes upwards (at the wheel next to his head). He needed some coffee. 

Zelgadis accidentally woke Amelia while trying to disentangle himself, and she in turn managed to kick Yosh on her way out from under the wagon. All three stumbled out into the morning sunlight, blinking groggily. The rain had stopped sometime during the night. It looked like it would be a beautiful day. 

* * *

**_Author's Note:_**The caravan guards are a tribute to all the merchants and mercenaries in Slayers who exist only to be rescued from bandits by the heroes, or to get fireballed when Lina's the one breaking the law. Consider this my fanfare to the common man. 

The caravaners will be the first my-characters in this story to stick around for more than one chapter. I hope you like them, but I promise not to forget that people read fanfiction for the original-series-characters. This is Zelgadis and Amelia's story and it's going to stay that way. 

On the other hand, Yosh _is_ pretty cute, and he's much nicer than Zelgadis. Don't you think he'd be a good match for Amelia? (ducks flames while giggling evilly) 


	14. Troubles of the Spirit and Heart

**Chapter 14: Troubles of the Spirit and Heart**

They were only a few days away from Sairaag when bandits attacked the caravan again. By that time Zelgadis had improved to the point that he could defeat even Seymor and Geoff, the best of the caravan's swordsmen, seven times out of eight. It was a good thing he had improved so much since these bandits were much more numerous and well organized than the ones they had encountered in the mountains. 

"H-how can you still be fighting?" Yosh screamed. 

Zelgadis looked over. The bandit advancing toward Yosh had a cluster of arrows stuck in his chest right where his heart should be. 

Zelgadis knocked the zombie bandit away from the young archer with a two-handed swing of his sword. "Amelia," he called, "someone is using black magic to keep these bandits fighting after they've been killed." 

Amelia cast a spell for dealing with the undead. Several of the bandits gasped and collapsed. The guards made short work of the rest. 

"Take care of things here," Zelgadis commanded the other guards, "If any more bandits come, cut off their limbs. Amelia, let's go deal with these bandits at the source." 

Amelia nodded, "Right!" The two of them cast Raywing and floated away. They located the bandit camp after a short search from above the treetops. It was surrounded by a high wall made of whole logs. 

After throwing a fireball into the camp to announce their presence, they landed on the gateposts, capes billowing in the wind. Bandits ran out of the wooden buildings to gawk at them. 

"You attacked our caravan," Zelgadis smirked. "You shouldn't have done that." 

"Evil doers, prepare to be smashed by the Hammer of Justice!" Amelia agreed. 

"Mega Brand," Zelgadis concluded casually. 

The ground exploded. Bandits screamed. The more cool-headed ones with bows shot at the invaders. Zelgadis easily dodged the arrows as he floated down to ground level. He drew his sword. Amelia raised a shield spell long enough to deflect all the arrows and then jumped into the fray. A minute later there were no bandits left standing. 

A tall, broad man strode through the smoke and twitching bodies. His air of authority suggested that he was the bandit leader. "Who are you and what do you want?" he asked coolly. 

"I am Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun and this is Zelgadis Greywords," Amelia announced, "We want you to give up your evil ways." 

"You have a black sorcerer working for you reanimating the dead," Zelgadis stated. 

"In other words, turning people into zombies," Amelia translated. 

Many of the bandits lying on the ground gasped in horror and shot panicked looks at the other bandits lying near them. 

"A black sorcerer, you say?" the bandit leader laughed, "No, I have someone much more powerful than that! Leitos, come forth." 

A shape condensed out of the dust rising from the camp, an implausible and hideous shape. 

Amelia gasped. "A mazoku. You made a contract with a mazoku!" 

"Very good," the bandit leader applauded mockingly. 

"That's evil!" 

"Not to mention stupid," Zelgadis added. 

The mazoku snickered, "I will enjoy feeding upon your suffering as you realize how foolish you were to challenge my master." 

Amelia threw an Emekia Lance at it. Zelgadis quickly followed suit. Leitos dodged the first and let the second wash over him harmlessly. 

Zelgadis and Amelia exchanged a glance. Amelia kept the demon dodging with more Emekia Lances and other astral attacks while Zelgadis prepared the most powerful astral attack of all, "Source of all souls which dwell in the eternal and infinite, everlasting flame of blue...Amelia, LOOK OUT!" 

Zelgadis threw himself between the girl and the lance of flame the mazoku had shot at her. The flames passed through his body. He collapsed, clutching his chest. 

"Zelgadis-san!" Amelia was on her knees beside him so fast that she caught him as he fell. "Did you forget that you're not made of stone anymore?" she murmured, cradling his head in her lap. She glared up at the monster with rage blazing in her eyes. "Evil monster who prevents the dead from resting in peace, if you've killed him I will never forgive you." 

"Does that mean that you will forgive me if he's not dead yet?" 

"I will never forgive your crimes, you..." 

"Amelia..." Zelgadis' hand reached up toward his protector's face but fell back weakly before it could touch her. 

"What is it, Zelgadis-sama?" Amelia bent close to hear his faint words. After several seconds she nodded. "Zelgadis-sama," whispered, tears shining in her eyes. She placed her hands over Zelgadis' on top of the wound and began muttering the words of a spell. Bluish light shone faintly around their layered fingers. 

"Do you really think your puny spells can save him, little girl?" the mazoku mocked. "Even if you heal him, I can easily strike him down again. And then I'll kill you even more easily. Yes, get angry. The taste of your rage is so sweet, your rage and grief and fear. Poor little..." 

"Ra-tilt!" Amelia and Zelgadis shouted together. Leitos had just time enough to see that Zelgadis was sitting up unaided before he was immolated by twin balls of pure astral energy. 

Zelgadis collapsed back into Amelia's lap with a sigh of relief. This time the spell she cast on his shoulder really was a healing spell. 

The bandit leader looked around in confusion. "Leitos, where are you? Leitos, come forth!" 

"Your mazoku is dead," Zelgadis told him, "You should never have made a contract with him. Everyone who makes a deal with a mazoku regrets it sooner or later. You should be glad we arrived before that Leitos betrayed you." 

The bandit leader pulled his wits together. He wouldn't have lasted long as a bandit if he wasn't good at adapting. "Attack them!" he yelled. 

The bandits who were still healthy enough and brave enough to fight obeyed. With one arm hanging limp at his side, Zelgadis stumbled to his feet. Amelia steadied him with an arm wrapped around his shoulders. 

"Now's the time to find out whether we really can beat bandits with one hand tied behind our backs," Zelgadis quipped grimly. 

Amelia nodded and cast a flare arrow with her free hand. Fortunately, once they proved that they were still capable of causing destruction many of the bandits panicked and ran. It took them awhile longer to finish off the bravest (or stupidest) ones, but in the end they were victorious. 

The two shamanists limped over to a nearby building, which turned out to be a storeroom. Amelia eased Zelgadis down onto a crate and finally finished healing his shoulder. 

"You said you weren't badly wounded," she reproached. 

What he had actually whispered to her during the fight was, "Don't worry about the wound. It isn't as bad as it looks. Just help me get rid of that mazoku before it really kills us." 

"I'm not. It missed my lung." 

Amelia's pursed lips showed what she thought of his definition of a bad wound. Zelgadis closed his eyes and let her work. 

"Okay, you're all fixed," Amelia said several minutes later. 

Zelgadis looked down. Even the hole in his armor was gone. His shoulder felt as good as new. 

He walked over to one of the shelves and pulled down a box. "I think this may be our reward," he said, handing it to Amelia. "I spent the time you were busy with that healing spell scanning the room for magic artifacts." 

She curiously opened the box. The six huge sapphires inside shone even in the faint light of the storeroom. Each one had a six-pointed star floating at its heart and a silver band fastened to its back. They seemed to be a headband, a belt, and four bracelets. It was the most powerful set of white magic amplifiers Amelia had ever seen. 

"But these must be worth millions! We should return them to their owner." 

Zelgadis' smile twisted into a bitter scowl. "Don't bother. I can guess where they came from. This is just the sort of thing Rezo would have had lying around. When his copy destroyed his lab, he didn't destroy all of it. There are hallways open all the way down the side of the pit that any raider could have entered." 

"Oh. Are you sure?" 

"This is Sairaag. Even if the last owner wasn't Rezo, the chances aren't very good that he or she is still alive." 

Amelia closed the box sadly, thinking of all the people who had died that night. She tucked the box under her arm and started to walk back to the caravan. Zelgadis picked up a second, smaller box and followed her out. They left any other treasure for the people of Sairaag to recover later. It would help buy the supplies necessary for rebuilding the city. 

* * *

"Wow, you've been gone all of half an hour. What took you so long?" Seymor joked when the two sorcerers rejoined the caravan. 

"They had a mazoku," Zelgadis replied absently. He was busy examining the bracelets he had picked up for himself in the bandit camp. Each one consisted of a large, semi-spherical ruby fastened to a thick copper band. They amplified his magic to almost the level he had enjoyed as a chimera. They also seemed to work well with the stones set into his cloak clasp and sword hilt. 

"A mazoku? Really?" Seymor looked like he wasn't sure whether or not they were teasing him. 

"Yes," Amelia confirmed. "Don't worry; we killed it." 

Yosh gulped. "Was it...very powerful?" He immediately felt stupid for asking that. _All_ mazoku were powerful. 

Zelgadis and Amelia exchanged thoughtful looks. 

"No, it was fairly low level," Zelgadis said. 

"Somewhat more powerful than that first mazoku we killed, the one that looked like a chicken, but definitely less powerful than either of the ones we fought in Seyruun," Amelia agreed. 

The expressions of the other caravan members ranged from awed to disbelieving. Hal congratulated himself yet again on getting such powerful fighters for only twelve gold a day. Mazoku or no mazoku, they had just taken out an entire bandit camp by themselves. He had heard the explosions and screams even from this distance. 

"Um, would you mind healing my arm now?" Tuck asked hesitantly. 

* * *

Only a year after its second destruction, Sairaag was already busy enough to have a line up at the front gate. The caravan members were sitting on the wagons, chatting to pass the time. 

"Do you think it's safe for us to go in there?" Amelia asked Zelgadis. "The last two times we visited Sairaag, it was destroyed." 

Zelgadis thought about that. "I think it's safe as long as we are not summoned here by an evil power seeking our destruction, and as long as Lina isn't with us. I've been here several times without the city coming to any harm." 

Amelia looked reassured. 

Hal walked over to them. "I'm planning to stay in Sairaag three or four days. I'll need you to help with unloading and reloading on the first and last days, and you'll each have to spend one day on guard duty watching the goods. That's one day from noon to noon. Other than that, you're free to go wherever you want and do whatever you want as long as you stay out of trouble. Does that suit you?" 

Both his mages nodded. 

"Excellent. Akio and Seymor have already claimed the last day and Geoff and Tuck have volunteered for the second. Do you want to stand guard the first day?" 

Zelgadis nodded. "That's fine." 

"Me too," Amelia volunteered. 

"Excellent. I'll get Yosh to take the first day with you. We'll go easy on you young people this time." Hal winked and then wandered off to inform Yosh of his guard duty. 

* * *

Sairaag was a strange mixture of old and new. All the buildings were so new that the paint wasn't even peeling, yet an aura of ancient sorrow hung like a haze over the city. All the wood was so fresh that it wasn't even weathered but the stones had come from the ruins of the former city. They showed the scars of fire, water and time. Wherever the caravanners looked, they saw only the cheerful activity of a rapidly growing town, but ghosts seemed to flit just beyond the edges of their peripheral vision. 

This was not just a town with the same name and almost the same location as the former city. This was Sairaag, ancient center of white magic and dark secrets. Even though Flagoon was gone, even though all the original buildings were gone, this was still Sairaag. Phoenix-like it was rising from its own ashes, new, ancient and mystical. 

"They call Sairaag the City of the Dead," Zelgadis said aloud, "The name used to refer to its destruction by the Demon-beast Zanaffar a thousand years ago, but now the name has a more immediate truth. This living part of the city seems tiny in comparison to all the ruins." 

"It's so sad," Amelia sniffed. Being in the city was bringing back unpleasant memories. The last time she had been here, she had died. 

"Yeah. I had some good friends who died in the destruction of the city. The first one." Hal agreed. 

"Me too," Seymor murmured. 

"Me too," Tuck sighed. 

Yosh wore a tragic expression which might mean that he had lost loved ones too, or might just mean that he sympathized with his companions' losses. The others looked pensive. 

"Well, that's all in the past," Akio said with an attempt at lightening the mood. "We're here now to make money and have fun! I know where I'm going as soon as we get these carts unloaded. There's a certain cozy little house down a certain side street - I forget the name of the street but I know I can find it - where I know I'll always be welcome. And there's this restaurant I can show you which serves the best food you've ever tasted." 

"Is it really that good?" Amelia asked brightly. 

"Oh, yes! You have to order a day in advance so they can spend the whole day preparing your meal. Sometimes you have to order more than a day in advance to get a table even though they don't let anyone eat there more often than once a week. It's that popular." 

"It sounds delicious!" 

"Yes it does," Seymor agreed, shaking off his gloom. "That's where we're eating tomorrow, right, Akio?" 

"Right!" 

"There's the warehouse," the caravan master pointed. "Now remember, the faster you unload, the sooner you'll be free." 

* * *

Yosh swallowed hard. The moment had come. Since Hal only required two people to stay with the wagons at any time, the three young people on the first shift could take turns on guard. Right now Zelgadis was taking advantage of that fact to make dinner reservations at the restaurant Akio had recommended. Yosh might never get another such perfect opportunity to tell Amelia how he felt about her. He had been waiting for such a moment for weeks, so why was it so hard to speak? 

"A-Amelia-san?" 

"Hmm?" 

Yosh glanced over at the dark haired girl. Her beauty took his breath away. For a moment, all he could do was stare at her. Then he took a deep breath and forced himself to continue. "I, um...There's something I want to tell you." 

"What is it?" Amelia's huge blue eyes fastened onto him curiously. 

Yosh looked down at his feet before the look in her eyes could melt all his thoughts or scatter them to the breezes. If he looked at her, the intensity of his feelings would choke out his ability to describe them. 

"I know that I'm just an ordinary archer and you're a powerful sorceress who can even kill mazoku. I know that I have no right to say these things to you, but I couldn't live with myself if I didn't tell you." 

"What is it?" Amelia repeated, now very intrigued and rather concerned. 

"I just want to tell you...that you are the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. And kind, and brave, and fun, and...and just a wonderful person in every way. I...I love you. I have ever since I met you. No, please don't say anything. I know you don't love me. You love Zelgadis." 

The last statement surprised Amelia out of speechless amazement. "How did you know that?" 

Yosh's face fell at that confirmation. "I overheard you talking to him the night we slept under a wagon because it was raining." 

Amelia's mouth rounded in a silent 'Oh.' She had completely forgotten about that night. 

Yosh sighed dejectedly. "I can guess why you like him. He's much more powerful than I am, and better looking. If I was you, I would probably prefer him too." 

"It isn't like that!" Amelia protested. "I don't care about his power or looks. I love him because he is a good person and...well...just because he is who he is. I don't really know why. We've been traveling together for a long time and I just...fell in love with him, I guess." 

She saw how much her words were hurting Yosh. "I like you too," she added hastily. "You're fun to be with, and you are a truly just person. I can tell that you really care about other people. And you shouldn't insult yourself! You're a very good archer. I can only think of two who are better, and they're both members of the royal bodyguard. You're very brave too. I would be glad to have you at my side in any battle. And there's nothing wrong with your looks either! I think you're cute." 

"Really?" Yosh looked up hopefully. "You really like me?" 

Amelia nodded her head emphatically. "I like you a lot!...but I don't love you." 

Yosh scowled. "Why do you have to love Zelgadis? All he cares about it swords and magic. He completely ignores your feelings for him! What a jerk!" 

"I know," Amelia said softly. "But now that I've given my heart, I can't take it back." She rubbed a thumb over the ring hidden by her white gloves. "Even if I didn't love Zelgadis-sama, I couldn't fall in love with you. I'm not free to give my heart away to anyone I want." 

"So Zelgadis qualifies but I don't." 

Amelia bit her lip. "Yes." She wanted to tell him the full truth but Zelgadis had sworn her to secrecy about their possible marriage. 

"I understand, I guess." Yosh was thinking that maybe sorceresses had to marry sorcerers in the same way that aristocrats had to marry other aristocrats. 

"I hope we can still be friends," Amelia said nervously. She didn't know that it was something that people were supposed to say when turning away a declaration of love. It was what she sincerely felt. 

"I guess so," Yosh replied despondently. 

Yosh made his escape from the tantalizingly untouchable sorceress as soon as Zelgadis returned. 

"What's wrong with him?" Zelgadis asked. "He was glaring at me as if he was contemplating murder." 

Amelia didn't answer. 

"We have reservations for tomorrow night. I ordered us a five course dinner. The restaurant looks superb." 

"Good." Amelia continued to frown distractedly at the ground. 

"Amelia, is something wrong?" 

"No, not really." 

Something was very wrong here, Zelgadis realized. Amelia was morose while he was cheerful. The natural order of things had been turned on its head. 

"Zelgadis-san, do you think that I'm beautiful?" Amelia asked suddenly. 

"Wh-what?" Zelgadis turned an interesting shade of dull pink. 

"Yosh-san said that I'm beautiful. No one has ever told me that before, except for family and courtiers, who have to say things like that." 

"Yosh said that?" Zelgadis asked with a wariness bordering on hostility. 

"Yes. He said that I'm kind, brave and fun too." Before Zelgadis could ask any of the urgent questions bumping against each other in his mind, Amelia continued. "He said...he said that he loves me. No one has ever fallen in love with me before!" 

Amelia somehow managed to simultaneously glow with happiness at the complements, droop sorrowfully at the thought of Yosh's hurt feelings, and watch Zelgadis anxiously for a reaction. 

"He said that?" Zelgadis repeated in a strangled voice. He was surprised to find that he felt jealous. Even if he didn't reciprocate her crush, Amelia's love for him had been flattering. But Yosh was a good man, if rather immature. His innocent and enthusiastic nature would be a good match for Amelia's. "Um, congratulations. I'm sure you'll be happy together." 

Amelia stamped her foot and glared fiery daggers at Zelgadis. "I told him that I didn't and couldn't love him." 

"You did? Why?" 

"Because I don't love him." I love you, she meant to add but her courage failed. "Besides, if I'm married to you then I can't fall in love with anyone else. That would be adultery." 

Zelgadis sighed in irritation. "Don't let that stand in your way if you find someone you do want." 

"I will honor my obligations." 

They glared at each other. After a few moments, they turned their backs on each other and pretended to be busy guarding the wagons from thieves. 

Gradually the tension drained away. 

"I don't know if I'd call you beautiful, but you are pretty," Zelgadis said at last, "or maybe 'cute' would be a better description." 

Amelia stared at him in utter surprise. Then a happy smile crept onto her face. 

"Thank you," she said, not sure whether to be irritated by the faint praise or overjoyed that he complimented her at all. 

* * *

"Good news!" Hal shouted as soon as he reached the wagons. 

The three on guard duty straightened up from their respective solitary activities. "What is it?" Yosh asked. 

"A commission for the Sorcerer's Guild. Someone in the Atlas City branch wants some artifacts the Sairaag branch dug up from the ruins." He noticed Zelgadis and Amelia's blank expressions so he added, "The Sorcerer's Guild always pays well and their goods usually don't take up much space." 

"Does that mean that we're going to Atlas City instead of Seyruun?" Zelgadis asked. 

"We're still going to Seyruun. We're just going by way of Atlas City. Is that a problem?" 

"It will add two or three weeks onto our journey, right?" Zelgadis calculated. 

"That's right," Hal confirmed. "Oh, I forgot! You're headed for Seyruun, aren't you? Are you in a hurry? Do you mind going to Atlas City first?" 

Zelgadis and Amelia exchanged a look that contained an entire battle of wills. 

"Two or three weeks shouldn't make much difference," Zelgadis said at last. 

"I like Atlas City. It has pretty architecture and good food," Amelia chirped with a sunny smile. 

"Excellent. Yosh, do you have any problem with going to Atlas City?" 

"I don't care. I'll go wherever the caravan goes." 

"Ah, good." Hal finally noticed that the archer was in an unusually bad mood. He glanced from Yosh to his other less than cheerful employees. He decided that whatever the problem was, they could work it out on their own. 

"Well," Hal said, "pass on the news to the others if you see them before I do." 

They nodded. 

Hal looked back and forth between them again rather nervously before walking off. 

"Yosh-san, would you like to play a game of cards?" Amelia asked in an attempt to break the ice. 

"Um, okay," the boy replied. 

Zelgadis ignored them as he returned to leaning against one of the wagons. "Atlas City," he muttered to himself. "I could see them again. It's been so long." 

* * *

**_Author's Note:_**Why is it that Slayers characters only show how much they care about each other on the verge of death? That really is not the best way to build a loving relationship unless what you're aiming for is a heart-rending tragic ending. Oh well, they're young and they've proven invincible so far. Maybe they'll sort themselves out eventually. 

My original plan for the bandit fights was to have three of them, each easier than the last. The first would be the one in chapter three where everything goes wrong. I rewrote that scene a bazillion times to add more disasters. The first draft was downright lame but I _like_ the final version. The second fight would show them being competent, and the third would show them defeating the enemy with style and ease because of their awesome teamwork. It was a neat idea but, as you can see, it didn't work out that way. The middle battle (in chapter four) ended up being pathetically easy, and it didn't make sense for them to be able to defeat a mazoku without difficulty. (Yes, Leitos was there from the beginning.) I like it much better this way. The battle is much more interesting when they are actually in danger, and there are touching romantic moments. 

Poor Yosh. I feel bad about breaking the poor kid's heart like this but Amelia deserves to have someone tell her how wonderful she is. Don't you agree? 


	15. Old Friends in New Sairaag

**Chapter 15: Old Friends in New Sairaag**

Amelia sighed as she turned a page. These legal texts were as dry as dust. They even smelled dusty. Thanks to her education as a future ruler, she could at least understand what she was reading, but that did not make it enjoyable. 

She had finished her guard duty at noon and then gone straight to Sairaag's civic library to look up marriage laws. Surprisingly, it was quite a large library. Apparently, more texts than people had survived Sairaag's destructions. 

She skimmed through a few more pages and then slammed the book shut. After half a day of mind-numbing work, she still hadn't found anything that clarified her marital situation at all. She was almost ready to give up. 

No, she scolded herself. You can do this. If you keep justice in your heart and never give up, you will always succeed. Sooner or later. 

Maybe books weren't the best way to reach her goal, though. It would be a lot easier to find out the information she needed by asking a real person, if she could find one who knew the answer. She gathered up all her books and headed back to reshelve them. 

Just as she pushed the fourth thick volume back into its place, a fight broke out a few shelves away. 

"No, I will not explain it again, Jellyfish-brains! Next time listen when I'm talking to you," a high-pitched voice shrieked. There was a sound like a heavy object (say, a body) slamming into another heavy object (say, a bookcase). 

Amelia peered around the end of her shelf in time to see a cascade of books tumble off the bookcase three rows down and one row over from her. She muttered to herself, "That sounded just like..." 

"Liiinaa," a man's voice whined, "you didn't have to hit me so hard. I was just asking." 

Amelia peeked around the edge of the recently denuded bookshelf. Gourry's head and one arm were sticking out from under a pile of books in the center of the aisle. He was using the arm to rub a lump on his head. Lina was standing over him, a book raised in one angry hand. 

Then Lina caught sight of a certain dark-haired young princess standing at the end of the aisle and forgot all about the argument. "Amelia?" Lina said incredulously. 

"Lina-san!" Amelia jumped over the collapsed man and books and straight into Lina's arms. "It's so good to see you! What are you doing here?" 

"That's what I should be asking you. I thought you were still in Seyruun." 

"I joined Zelgadis-san in his quest for a cure. We visited a transformation spring and a healing spring, but neither one helped him although the transformation spring turned him into such a cute little bunny! Then we found a whole forest full of chimeras and beastmen. They treated us with unjust cruelty but Zelgadis-san wouldn't let me punish them. Then a sorcerer tried to dissect Zelgadis-san and turn me into a chimera and Zelgadis-san helped me punish him. Now we're travelling with a caravan. Hal -- the caravan master -- hired us as guards." 

"Whoa, slow down. Now tell me the story again, in order this time." 

"First tell me what you've been doing. Are you off to save the world again?" 

"No. Gourry and I were just in the area so we decided to visit Sairaag. I wanted to see the magical texts they've been digging out of the ruins. Gourry here kept talking about Slyphiel's cooking." Gourry had finally managed to dig himself out from under the books. Now Lina's hearty slap on the shoulder sent him tumbling down again. 

"Hello, Amelia," Gourry grinned, finally managing to get a toehold in the conversation. 

"Hello, Gourry-san," Amelia smiled back. 

Lina frowned thoughtfully. "We heard that there was a big gang of tougher-than-usual bandits just north of Sairaag, but when we got here someone else had already got rid of them. The funny thing is that whoever it was didn't take any of their treasure. I can't figure it out." 

"Oh, those bandits," Amelia said. Lina eyed her suspiciously. "Zelgadis-san and I took care of them a few days ago after they attacked our caravan. That's where I got these magic amplifiers." She proudly held her wrist up for inspection. 

"..." was all Lina could manage to say. 

"The leader had made a deal with a mazoku." Amelia scowled cutely. "Fortunately, it wasn't a very powerful one." 

"A mazoku?" Gourry repeated. 

"Let's go get some dinner and exchange stories." Lina suggested. "Reunions are even more fun when you have food to go with them." 

"Dinner?" Amelia repeated. "Oh no! What time is it?" She looked around wildly until she spotted a clock. It was five minutes to six o' clock. 

"I'm sorry. I have to go or I'll be late!" Amelia started to run towards the end of the aisle. 

"Go where? Late for what?" Lina asked in confusion. 

"Dinner. I'd invite you to come along but it's one of those places where you have order a day ahead because the food takes so long to prepare. There wouldn't be enough food for all four of us. See you later!" and Amelia was gone. 

Lina and Gourry exchanged thoughtful looks. 

"Amelia sure rushed off fast," Gourry said. 

"She's definitely hiding something," Lina agreed. 

"She said something about dinner, right?" 

"Food that takes a day to prepare." 

They exchanged another look. Then, by common consent, they ran after Amelia. "Surely they can spare us a few bites. After all, we are old friends," Lina called out unnecessarily. Gourry was right at her heels. 

* * *

Amelia landed outside the restaurant. She had cast Raywing as soon as she was outside the library in order to get here on time. Zelgadis was already waiting. 

"I just met Lina-san and Gourry-san at the library!" Amelia exclaimed. 

Zelgadis' eyes widened in surprise and pleasure. Then he looked around suspiciously, fearful for his dinner. "They didn't follow you did they?" 

"I don't think so. I left the library from the door in the opposite direction from the restaurant just in case. It seems a bit cold to deceive them like that, but if they came here the restaurant might never recover." 

"That was wise. This is a good restaurant." 

They walked in and were seated at a table near the window. A waiter brought in their meal on a cart. One advantage to ordering a day in advance was that they didn't have to wait for their food. Zelgadis and Amelia happily inhaled the delicious aromas as the waiter arranged the dishes elegantly in the center of the table. As soon as he was gone, they wasted no time in transferring the food from the serving dishes to their plates and from their plates to their stomachs. 

"Did you find anything today?" Zelgadis asked, neatly buttering a roll. 

Amelia ladled some soup into her bowl. "No. I think I'll have to ask an expert on marriage laws and customs. Do you know where I might find one?" 

"I haven't got a clue. Did you ask the librarians?" 

"I was about to when I saw Lina-san." 

* * *

Lina and Gourry finally tracked Amelia down more by an instinct for finding restaurants than by actually tracking Amelia. 

"Mmm, what delicious smells," Lina breathed, almost lifted off the ground by the tantalizing aromas. She drifted closer to the restaurant. 

"Hey, isn't that Amelia in there?" Gourry asked. 

Lina snapped out of her food-induced trance. She peered in the window. "Yeah, you're right, but who is that with her?" To her surprise, both the heads bent over the food were dark. "I assumed she would be with Zel, but I guess she didn't actually say that. Maybe we shouldn't interrupt them. It might be a romantic dinner." 

Her scruples, allied with her uneasiness at the thought of romance, battled with her stomach. Then curiosity joined in the fight and scruples were left moaning by the wayside as Lina dragged Gourry with her into the restaurant and over to Amelia's table. 

"Hey, Amelia, does Zelgadis know that you eat dinner with good looking young men when he's not around?" Lina teased. 

Amelia glanced over at her companion in confusion. "Uh, yes?" she said uncertainly. 

The young man, who really was very good looking, glanced up at Lina and Gourry with great amusement and some self-consciousness. "Don't you recognize me?" he asked. 

They recognized his voice. "Zel?" "Zelgadis!" they exclaimed together, "You're cured!" 

"Amelia," Lina added in a dangerous tone of voice, "is there anything _else_ you forgot to mention?" 

Amelia twisted her gloved hands together nervously in her lap. "Um..." 

Fortunately, she was saved from having to answer when Gourry grabbed a veal cutlet from Zelgadis' plate. 

"Hey, that's my dinner!" Zelgadis protested. 

"Surely you can spare a few bites for your poor, hungry friends." Lina seized a stuffed roll. 

"No!" Amelia said. "I told you, Lina-san. We only ordered enough food for two. It's unjust to barge in and steal people's dinners!" 

It was too late. It would take little short of a Mega Brando to dislodge Lina and Gourry from the food now. 

"At least leave some for me!" Amelia cried, diving into the fray. 

Zelgadis watched in horror as his serene and appetizing dinner turned into a disgusting battle over who could stuff food down her throat the fastest. If he didn't do something quickly, Lina would consume all of the best order of veal cutlets he had ever tasted. No. Not this time. Zelgadis grabbed a fork and started shoveling veal into his mouth. 

* * *

Zelgadis dragged the other three out of the restaurant before the waiter could bring dessert, mouthing "Lina Inverse" to the surprised owner. The owner took a better look at the orange-haired girl his customer was pointing to and nodded his gratitude. Fortunately, Lina missed the exchange. She was too busy whining about being dragged away before she was full. 

"I swear that we can't get any more food here," Zelgadis said for the seventh time, "but there's a restaurant just across the street with much faster service." 

The new restaurant turned out to be quite different from the one they had just left. It was the sort of tavern where the walls and ceiling are blackened from generations of smoke and the plain, folksy customers sit on long wooden benches worn shiny with use. This particular tavern was only a year old and therefore lacked the proper patina of age, but it tried to maintain the right atmosphere anyway. Lina didn't bother to shout over the crowd-noise. She just pointed to a relatively empty spot at the end of one of the tables. 

A waitress dumped a heaping platter of roast beef and four mugs of cider in front of the adventurers as soon as they sat down, which put Lina into a much better mood. She and Gourry quickly dug in. Zelgadis and Amelia just exchanged a look of amusement and complete mutual sympathy, and left the meat to their hungrier friends. After all, they had just eaten three and a half courses of a five course dinner. 

Zelgadis winced as a fork whooshed past his ear fast enough to create a breeze. The two gluttons had already managed to consume half of the meat on the platter. He rolled his eyes and looked away from their flagrant lack of table manners. Amelia was watching the food fight with an appreciative grin. Zelgadis smiled faintly in return. The moment was so familiar that it felt like coming home. 

When had he started to think of these people as friends and not merely nuisances that Fate kept throwing in his path? Even while doing something as simple as eating dinner, Lina blazed with life and personality. She was so much tougher than her youth and slight build suggested, yet, for all her world-wise attitude, her heart was surprisingly vulnerable. Then there was Gourry, the water to Lina's fire. He was wise, patient, chivalrous and kind, but so unassuming that his nobility never caused irritation (unlike his lack of intelligence and tact). Last but not least, Amelia: simple on the surface but so much stronger and deeper than he would ever have guessed from his first impression. When had these people become so precious to him? 

What would he be doing now if Lina hadn't picked just the wrong moment to attack the Dragon Fang Bandits? Well, he would be dead and the world would be in the middle of another Mazoku War. Leaving aside Shabranigdo's resurrection, what would he be doing now if his life had continued in the path of three years ago? He would still be doing shameful things for a man he loathed. He would still be searching for a cure that remained as far out of reach as ever. Instead of Lina, Gourry and Amelia, he would be sitting with Zolf and Rodimus, and maybe even Dilgear. Zolf and Rodimus had been truer friends than he deserved, but they had been minions. He hadn't realized how deep friendship could run until Lina had dragged him along on her search for the Clair Bible (or rather, tagged along on his search). Zel owed her a debt of gratitude he could never repay for repeatedly stumbling into his life and refusing to get back out again. 

"So, how did you manage to find your cure, Zel?" Lina asked around a mouthful of meat. 

Startled out of his thoughts, Zelgadis looked up. The platter was empty except for a few small, reddish puddles. Lina washed down her last mouthful of beef with a huge gulp of cider and sighed noisily in contentment. 

"We went to the temple where we first met Gaav. We used a chimea unmaking spell I had created amplified by the power of the Clair Bible," Zel answered. 

"I cast the spell!" Amelia exclaimed proudly. "I had to pull the golem and demon out of his body. It was really hard but Auntie Aqua helped me." 

Lina looked impressed. "What are you two doing now? Any new quests?" 

Both the questionees shook their heads. Zelgadis explained, "We're just on our way back to Seyruun. What about you? Have you found any new villains trying to destroy the world?" 

Lina shook her head. "Nah. We're just wandering around in search of treasure and good meals as usual. I thought we'd find both here but you already took care of the bandits and Slyphiel doesn't seem to be in the city." She sighed. 

"You don't have any quest at all?" Amelia asked disbelievingly. "But you're always on some kind of quest when we meet up unexpectedly. Then you somehow manage to drag me into it and we end up saving the world." 

"Yeah, I know," Lina answered. "Are you sure you guys don't have any mission at all? Some ancient and powerful relic to find? Some monster to get rid of?" 

"No, my only mission is to take Amelia back to Seyruun before her father gets worried enough to come looking for her," Zelgadis answered. 

"Daddy knows I can take care of myself," Amelia pouted, sending a reproachful glare at Zelgadis. "He'll understand if I have to go on another important quest." 

"So far, we have no important quests to go on," the dark haired young man retorted. 

"Maybe something will happen while we're here," Gourry suggested. 

"This _is_ Sairaag," Lina agreed. 

Everyone fell silent as memories of past battles flooded their minds. 

"Waitress, can we have some more roast beef?" Gourry called. Everyone else snapped back to the present. 

"What are you planning to do while you're in Sairaag?" Zelgadis asked Lina, sipping his cider. 

"I don't know. Look through that library some more. Find out whether there are any good magic shops in the city." Lina shrugged. 

"I'd like to see the ruins," Amelia said. 

"Great idea!" Lina agreed enthusiastically. "I hear they're digging up some great stuff. You never know what we might find." 

"That isn't what I meant," Amelia muttered rebelliously. She couldn't explain even to herself exactly why she wanted to visit the ruins, but it wasn't treasure hunting. She had seen so much destruction here, so many deaths. It just wouldn't feel right to leave the city without facing those old ghosts. 

"That could be interesting," Zelgadis was agreeing. 

"Gourry, what do you think?" Lina prodded her partner. 

"Hmm? I wasn't paying attention." 

Lina elbowed him in the head. "Well pay attention! I was asking whether you'd like to look at the ruins tomorrow." 

"Sure," Gourry said amiably. 

Then Lina noticed what had distracted Gourry. The waitress wove her way around the end of the table and gratefully dropped the huge platter of meat in between Gourry and Lina. There were two forks embedded in it before it hit the table. 

Zelgadis drained the last of his cider and stood up. "I'm heading back to the caravan. See you tomorrow." 

Amelia looked from Lina to Gourry to the plate of meat and made a rough mental estimate of how much worthwhile conversation was likely to occur in the next hour. "I'll come with you," she called out to Zelgadis. 

As soon as they were outside, Zel grabbed Amelia's hand and pulled her toward the far side of the street. 

"Wait, isn't the caravan in the other direction?" Amelia protested. 

Zel looked back with a conspiratorial gleam in his eye. "We never got our dessert." 

* * *

"There's nothing here." 

"Be patient. We've only been digging here for half an hour. It takes time to find anything. It would take less time, by the way, if you helped more." Gourry shoved a sweat-soaked lock of blonde hair out of his eyes. 

"I'm telling you, I really don't think we're going to find anything here." 

"Lina-san is right," Amelia said, leaning on her shovel. "There have been lots of people digging in this area already. They've probably found everything important already." 

"Then where do you suggest we dig?" Zelgadis inquired sarcastically. 

Lina turned around slowly in a full circle, surveying the land. "This way," she said and set off in a direction almost, but not quite, in the opposite direction from the living city. The others shrugged, picked up their shovels, and followed her. 

* * *

"Here," Lina declared. 

"Why here?" Gourry protested. 

"My woman's intuition says there's something here, and it's never wrong." 

Zelgadis rolled his eyes, but kept his mouth shut when Lina glared at him challengingly. 

"Dig," Lina ordered, jumping on the top of her shovel's blade to force it through the thick layer of weeds. 

Gourry enthusiastically set to work clearing the ground. Zelgadis moved to his own patch of weeds a few feet away, sighed, and started digging. 

"Wow, I can't get used to the new Zel!" Lina confided to the one friend still in reach. 

Amelia agreed. "Even after so many weeks, I'm still surprised sometimes that he's not blue." 

Lina leaned on her shovel and stared thoughtfully at the young man under discussion. "It's more than just his looks." 

Amelia considered that as she forced her shovel into the dirt. "He smiles more. I've even seen him laugh! I guess he really was unhappy about being a chimera." 

"No, really?" Lina replied sarcastically. Then she turned her mockery on another target. "Zelgadis Greywords smiling and laughing; what a thought! In all the time I've known him, I've seen him laugh exactly once." She held up one finger for emphasis. 

Amelia stared at her. "You saw him laugh when he was still a chimera? _When_?" 

"_Way_ back. Before your time." 

"Oh." Amelia frowned down at her shovelful of dirt as she dumped it beside the hole. 

Lina tried to break though some particularly tough roots by stabbing them repeatedly with her shovel blade. It didn't work very well. "Nice outfit, by the way," Lina commented. 

Amelia's face lit up. "Do you really like it? I wanted something more like my old costume, but this was the only good quality white tunic in my size I could find." 

"It looks good. I especially like those amplifier gems." 

"Zelgadis-san found them. They are pretty, aren't they?" 

"Have you tried them out yet?" 

"Not really. I only got them the day before yesterday." 

"They look powerful." 

"I hope so. Yours are much more powerful though." 

"They should be considering how much I paid for them." 

"I like mine. They're better suited to white magic." 

"Lina, you picked this spot. The least you can do is help with the digging," Zelgadis called irritably. 

The two girls quickly sprang back to work. 

* * *

"Can't you guys dig any faster? We haven't got all day, you know," Lina said for the fifth time in the last hour. The other three glared at her. 

"Dimilar Wind," Zelgadis and Amelia responded simultaneously, pointing to the ground near Lina's feet. A spectacular fountain of dirt shot into the air. When it settled, the depth of the hole had more than doubled, and Lina was brown from head to foot. 

Amelia put both hands over her mouth. "Oops." 

Zelgadis picked a piece of sod out of his hair and burst out laughing. 

Lina, who had opened her mouth to yell at them, left it hanging open. "You were right Amelia. He does laugh now," she said at last. 

"Come to think of it, I never have heard him laugh before," Gourry commented. 

"The first time I heard him laugh was right after he became human again," Amelia said, looking ruefully at her once-white tunic but smiling at the memory. 

"Look, there's something down there," a red-faced Zelgadis pointed out to change the subject. 

It was a metal bookcase. The two men managed to wrestle it upright. There was a whole assortment of objects underneath. 

"The bookcase must have been knocked over during the explosion," Zelgadis suggested. "Its contents were caught between the bookcase and the floor and so they survived." 

"Then these books are in perfect condition? Lucky!" Lina snatched up one of them. She eagerly opened it, and scowled. "Or not. Look, all the ink has run." 

"Well, this area _was_ completely underwater," Amelia pointed out. 

A quick search through the other books revealed very few legible pages. 

Lina sighed bitterly. "I know people who would have paid a lot for these. Oh well. Let's keep looking." 

"Maybe there's something valuable in here?" Gourry, who had wandered off in boredom while the others were looking through the books, held up a small, tarnished metal box. "I can't figure out how to open it," he added plaintively. 

"Give me that." Lina grabbed it out of his hands. "No wonder you couldn't figure it out. It's magically sealed." 

"Can you open it?" Zelgadis asked. 

"Yeah, I think so." Lina muttered something into the lock. The lid sprang up so fast it nearly burst its hinges. Lina grinned smugly. 

"What's in there?" Amelia asked, leaning over Lina's shoulder. 

Lina thrust the box back into Gourry's hands and unfolded the parchment that had been inside. "It's a map. A treasure map!" she squealed with delight, pointing to the clearly marked X in the center. She read, "'Here is contained the personal library of Hakon, founder of the School of Biological Replication and Transmutation.'" 

"Oh, is that all?" Zelgadis sounded disappointed. "I doubt he would have anything I haven't read. Hakon the Red was not noted for his original thinking." 

"Well, I'm going after it. Amelia, would you like to come too?" Lina of course took it for granted that Gourry would go with her. 

Amelia looked back and forth between Zelgadis and Lina, torn. 

Zel began to regret his hasty dismissal of the treasure. "She can't," he snapped. "We're going to Seyruun." 

"But, Zelgadis-san..." 

"Have you forgotten that we're under contract to Hal?" 

"Um...." Amelia didn't think Hal would stop them from leaving if they wanted to. 

"Aw, go with him." Lina nudged Amelia toward Zelgadis. "Zel just doesn't want to do guard duty alone." She grinned at the dark-haired man's discomfiture. 

"That's not the reason," he muttered unconvincingly. 

Amelia still looked indecisive. 

"See you later, Amelia, Zel," Lina called, already dragging Gourry away with her in the direction of hopeful treasure. "Maybe we'll come visit you in Seyruun after we find this treasure." 

"Where are we going?" Gourry's voice drifted back plaintively as the two vanished over a hill. 

Amelia and Zelgadis were left blinking at their friends' dust trail. 

"Um, do you think there's anything else worth looking at here?" Amelia asked tentatively. 

"Probably not," Zelgadis replied. "Shall we head back to the city? It's probably time to start loading the wagons." 

Amelia watched as Lina and Gourry reached the edge of the forest. Lina was talking animatedly and Gourry appeared to be paying attention for once. He was nodding his head emphatically as they walked into the trees and out of sight. 

Amelia smiled up at her remaining companion. "Okay." 

* * *

Zelgadis was distracted from his battle with the recalcitrant tarp he was trying to fasten over a load of Sairaag-made cloth by the arrival of a skinny man in a mud-stained red robe. 

The man cleared his throat nervously. "Is there a Hallas Leitzu here?" 

Hal brushed off his hands on his pants as he walked up to the man in red. "That's me. You would be from the Sorcerer's Guild, right?" 

"Yes. This is the package we want delivered." The skinny mage handed over a small chest. "Make sure this gets to Terimac the Gold. Terimac, mind you. Not Alceste or any of the others. Terimac." 

"Don't worry; I understand. I've dealt with Atlas City politics before. Terimac the Gold." Hal gestured for Yosh to take the chest and stow it on the middle cart. 

Relieved of his burden, the mage relaxed. "That's right." 

"What's in it, if you don't mind my asking?" Hal inquired casually. 

The red mage hesitated, glancing around suspiciously at everyone in earshot. Seeing only workers, warriors and other purely physical types (Zelgadis' amulet-bearing wrists were hidden by the edge of the wagon and Amelia was out of sight), he shrugged. "I guess it can't hurt to tell you. They're papers that we believe may lead us to the lost library of a great mage of Sairaag named Hakon the Red." His skinny chest swelled with pride at the thought that he wore the same color as such a great man. "We hope to find hints in the writings of his contemporaries." 

Zelgadis quietly choked. 

"We'll take good care of them," Hal assured the man seriously. 

* * *

**_Author's Note:_**The reason why this story stars only Zelgadis and Amelia is that they are the characters closest to my own personality (Zel for being antisocial, intellectual and selfish, Amelia for being optimistic, naieve and perpetually cheerful). Lina and Gourry are such opposites from me that I wasn't sure I could write them. However, they turned out well enough in this chapter that maybe I will try doing more with them in the future. 

The level of food-obsession was high enough at least. Have you noticed that Lina and Gourry's eating-style is contagious? I suspect that Amelia does have good table manners under normal conditions but she has to resort to dirty tactics in order to get enough to eat when Lina and Gourry are around. She has a healthy appetite. I figure that Lina and Gourry each eat about twelve times as much as an average person under normal conditions (judging by what they order during their first meal together), somewhat more when worried or depressed, and about as much a small town when they've been starving for several days. I have very little evidence for this but my guess is that Amelia eats only two or three times as much as an average person - six at most - or ten times that when she's been starving. She certainly participates just as enthusiastically in the food battles as the other two, but I doubt she wins more than a small fraction of the battles considering how experienced her opponents are. Zelgadis does not eat. Or at least, we rarely see him eat. My theory is that he satisfies his hunger (with enough food for 1/2 a normal person) near the beginning of meals while the food fight is too intense to allow conversation. By the time people slow down enough to be worth paying attention to (i.e. when we see them), he has finished eating and just sips a drink to keep the others company. That's just a theory though. Maybe his one third demon part allows him to function without food like a mazoku. It's certainly creepy how little he eats in TRY (ex. sipping a glass of wine for the entire time it takes the other three to devour a whole banquet - how did he not get drunk?). In any case, now that Zel is human he has an appetite again and therefore will have to join in the battle for food from now on. Poor guy. 

The level of mayhem and destruction in this chapter was rather low considering that Lina and Gourry were in it, but there just wasn't anything that required blowing up. I'm not really sorry. Sairaag has been damaged enough times already. 

I bet you thought the 'old friend' would be Slyphiel, didn't you? Well, she's a travelling sorceress with a life of her own. She can't be home all the time. My personal theory is that she went off to the far north, accidentally resurrected Lei Magnus, and trapped Shabranigdo in the body of her teddy bear (private joke). 


	16. Where Have You Been?

**Chapter 16: Where Have You Been?**

"Welcome to Atlas City." Hal smiled sardonically. "We'll be here for a week so each of you gets to spend two days guarding the goods. Other than that, you're free to wander wherever you like, but stay out of trouble. In Atlas City, trouble generally means the Sorcerer's Guild, so stay away from Guild members. Any questions? Good. Now, who wants the first shift?" 

Zelgadis spoke up at once. "I'll take the first and last shifts. I have business outside the city which may take me awhile." 

Amelia stared at him in surprise. Then her eyebrows pulled together. "I'll take those shifts too." 

Zelgadis did not look pleased. 

* * *

"What business do you have outside the city?" Amelia asked, swinging her heels against the side of the wagon she was sitting on. 

The two stuck on guard duty were eating sandwiches and apples bought from a nearby food vendor while the rest of the caravanners were enjoying a roast beef dinner at Nyo-Heron's, one of the star attractions of the city. 

Zelgadis frowned irritably. "Personal business." 

"You aren't planning to make any shady deals with power-hungry megalomaniacs, are you?" As much as she wanted to trust Zelgadis, he had done that sort of thing on more than one occasion. 

"No. You can come with me if you like, but it probably won't interest you. It's just...personal business. It doesn't involve punishing any evildoers." 

Her smile made it clear that his half-hearted attempt at reverse-psychology had failed. 

* * *

Amelia followed Zelgadis toward the town. It looked pretty much like any other small town of the region. The modest houses were dwarfed by the thick forest looming behind them, but they looked cozy and well maintained. 

To Amelia's surprise, Zelgadis turned off the road onto a side path just before they entered the town. The path led past a thicket, through an orchard and around several herb patches and flower beds. Finally they came in sight of the cottage at the end of the path. It was white with a freshly thatched roof and brightly-colored curtains in the windows. 

A girl who had been weeding one of the flowerbeds looked up in surprise. Then she jumped to her feet and ran toward them yelling, "Zel! _Zel!_ I can't believe it! Where have you _been_?" Her voice was soft and melodious even while shrieking with delight,. She threw her arms around the startled young man and held on as if she never meant to let go. 

Zelgadis forced her away from him to arm's length and stared at her. The girl was very pretty. She had burgundy-red hair and bright, brown eyes. She was probably only in her early teens but she was already as tall as Zelgadis. Zelgadis looked her up and down and up again. "Roz? You've...grown." 

"That's what happens when you vanish for three years without even sending a letter," the girl replied reproachfully, burrowing back into his arms. This time Zelgadis returned the hug with equal enthusiasm. Amelia started to turn green with envy. 

The cottage door opened and a young man leaned out. "What's all this noise about? Rosy, who is that you've caught?" 

"It's Zel!" she shouted back. 

"_Zel?_" the man repeated. 

Moments later, he grabbed Zelgadis from the girl's arms and slapped him enthusiastically on the back. Zelgadis returned the greeting, grinning. 

The man was in his mid-to-late twenties with a tall, thin but muscular body. His wild, black hair was mostly pulled back into a ponytail. He had the bearing of a fighter although he was dressed like an ordinary farmer. 

"I didn't expect to see you," Zelgadis said. "Shouldn't you be out adventuring somewhere?" 

"I joined a mercenary troop. We're taking a break between jobs right now. What about you? What have you been doing all this time?" 

"I..." Zelgadis began, but was cut off by another person throwing her arms around him. 

"Zelgadis, welcome home," the woman said. Her light brown hair was streaked with grey and her face was lined, but she retained much of the prettiness of her youth. "I'm glad you finally decided to honor us with your company." She released Zelgadis and walked over to Amelia. "Please introduce us to your friend." 

"Oh, sorry." Zelgadis remembered his manners. "This is Amelia. Amelia, this is my mother." He indicated the fair-haired woman, who bowed. Amelia bowed back. 

"This is my sister Rozlin." 

"Hi," Rozlin said, waving. 

"And this is my brother, Arturos." 

The young man named bowed deeply, "Charmed." 

Now that she knew they were related, Amelia could see that there was a strong family resemblance between the four. 

"Where's our father?" Zelgadis asked, looking around. 

"In his lab, of course," Rozlin answered. "Now, come in and tell us where you've been for the last three years." Her mother and brother nodded in agreement. 

Arturos put an affectionate but firm arm around his brother's shoulders and guided him toward the house. Rozlin followed, almost dancing with excitement and wiping her hands on her apron. Mrs. Greywords smiled at Amelia. "Please come in, Amelia-san. Any friend of my son is welcome in my house." 

Once they were settled in the parlor, Mrs. Greywords began. "Let's see. The last time I saw you, my son, was a spring evening three and a half years ago. It was raining, as I recall, but you wouldn't come in. You were obsessed with training yourself to use that new sword of yours. You still have it, I see. The next morning you were gone and there was a note on the table saying, and I quote, 'I have gone to work for Rezo. Goodbye, Zelgadis.' We were understandably rather upset. What possessed you to leave in the middle of the night to work for Rezo, of all people? You didn't even take any food or spare clothing with you. Zelgadis, dear, _where have you been?_" 

Zelgadis shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "Rezo hired me to help him find an artifact. I found it. It killed him. After that I traveled on my own for awhile. I happened to be passing through Atlas City today, so I came by to visit. That's all." 

"No, it isn't!" Amelia sprang to her feet. Zelgadis winced. "You didn't mention how you saved the world from Shabranigdo and Kopii Rezo and Chaos Dragon Gaav and Hellmaster Phibrizzo and Dark Star." 

"I didn't actually kill most of those," Zelgadis protested weakly. 

"You helped! And what about..." 

"Wait a minute," Arturos interrupted sternly, holding up his hands, "_Kopii_ Rezo? _Shabranigdo?_ _PHIBRIZZO?_ You aren't trying to claim that you're the one who broke the Mazoku seal, are you?" 

"No, I wasn't trying to," Zelgadis muttered. 

"A few years ago Dad said that Shabranigdo had been resurrected. Everybody laughed at him, except us of course," Rozlin said. "Do you know anything about that?" 

"Yes," Zelgadis admitted reluctantly. With Amelia and his mother both watching him like hawks, he couldn't get away with lying. 

"And?" Rozlin prompted. 

"I don't want to talk about it." 

"That still doesn't explain why you left so suddenly." Zel's mother gave him a piercing look. "Or why it took you this long to come back." 

Zelgadis stared silently at the floor. 

"It wouldn't have anything to do with Rezo turning you into a chimera, would it?" 

Zel's head snapped up. "How did you know that?" 

"Zel, dear, your name and face were on wanted posters all over Atlas City two years ago. It wasn't that hard to work it out." 

"I had forgotten about those," Zelgadis admitted ruefully. 

"You didn't have to stay away so long. We love you. We would still love you even as a chimera. We could have helped you search for a cure." 

Zelgadis stared at the floor again. 

His mother looked at him tenderly and then quickly changed the subject, "By the way, who posted a reward for you, and did you ever go see him about it?" 

"Yes." 

Roz leaned forward excitedly, her dark red braid falling over her shoulder. "Were you in Sairaag when it exploded?" 

"Of course he wasn't," Arturos scolded her, "No one survived the explosion." 

"We did," Amelia corrected him, "both times, and we punished the evildoers who destroyed the city!" 

"Wow, really?" Rozlin exclaimed. "Tell me all about it!" 

With the help of Amelia's frequent interjections, the Greywords family eventually managed to pry the more-or-less complete story of his travels out of Zelgadis. It included parts that even Amelia hadn't known about. 

Suddenly Mrs. Greywords stood up. "Oh my, it's almost dinner time!" 

"Is it?" Arturos sprang to his feet too. "I have to go tell Mirai that I can't eat dinner with her family tonight." 

"Mirai?" Zel repeated, but Arturos was already out of earshot. "As in 'that little brat Mirai'?" 

"They're dating," Rozlin explained primly. 

"Things really have changed." Zelgadis ran thoughtful fingers through his hair. 

"You have no idea." Rozlin grinned maliciously. The she laughed at Zel's apprehensive expression. "No, they haven't really. Most things are just the same as they always were, boooring. Don't you just love small towns?" 

"Hush, Rozlin. You're going to Seyruun next year, so stop complaining. And come set the table for me." 

"You're going to Seyruun?" Zelgadis repeated, feeling increasingly out of touch. 

His mother dumped a dish into his hands. "She's going to be a shrine maiden in one of the major temples. She's already learned all the white magic I can teach her, so it's the logical next step." 

"I'm going to be a healer," Rozlin announced proudly. 

Zel automatically put the dish on the table and went to the kitchen for another one. Amelia followed him. 

"I'm a Seyruunese shrine maiden," she told Rozlin as she placed the salad on the table. 

"Really? Which temple?" 

"Sort of all of them, but I spend the most time in the central temple of Cephied." 

"The one at the center of the city, at the heart of the hexagram formed by the streets?" 

"Yes, that one. Which one are you going to?" 

The girls chatted happily about the comparative merits of the various temples of Seyruun until every last dish and utensil was in its proper place. Then Rozlin went to tell her father that dinner was ready. Zel had offered to do it, but his mother told him sternly that, if he did, dinner would be cold by the time he got back. His father would insist on telling him about every project he had worked on since Zel's departure. 

"Mirai's family said that they will excuse me for one night, but they want to see you first thing tomorrow morning, Zel," Arturos reported, sitting down at the table. 

Mr. Greywords stepped into the room from the opposite direction. He looked like a taller, older, less fierce version of Zelgadis. His dark hair was streaked with grey but, except for its expression of calm wisdom, his face was deceptively youthful. He wore plain, dark-grey, scholarly robes. 

He nodded to his younger son. "Good evening, Zelgadis." Then he turned to Amelia, "And you must be Amelia. Welcome." 

Zelgadis nodded back. "Good evening, Father." 

Between the excellent food and exchanging stories, dinner was over all too quickly. 

"So, Zel, did you learn any new tricks during your travels?" Arturos asked meaningfully after the dishes had been cleared away. 

"Would you like to find out?" Zelgadis replied in the same pseudo-casual tone. 

Arturos smiled fiercely. "I would love to." 

Zel's smile was creepily identical. "Good." 

Mrs. Greywords sighed. "No offensive magic near the house..." 

"...and if we hurt your flowerbeds, you'll hurt us. Yes, we know, Mother." Arturos grinned. "Hearing you say that makes me feel twelve years old again. Ready, Zel?" 

Zelgadis nodded and the two vanished out the door, grabbing their swords from the umbrella rack on the way out. 

"Isn't that just like them, to run off and fight when there are still dishes that need washing?" Mrs. Greywords sighed with fond motherly annoyance. 

"I had forgotten how much they did that." Rozlin agreed. 

"At least I still have you." Mrs. Greywords smiled at her daughter. 

"Aw, Mom, I wanted to talk more with Amelia." 

"I'll help with the dishes too," Amelia volunteered. She struck a heroic pose. "It's only fair for me to share in household chores while sharing your house." 

"Yay!" Rozlin headed toward the kitchen without another complaint. 

* * *

"I'm surprised to hear that you're dating Mirai now." Zel said as the two young men walked along the familiar path leading into the forest. "I thought she was just an annoying little girl who followed you around. You hated her." 

Arturos pinkened. "I know, but...You'll understand when you see her tomorrow. Zel, did you know that annoying little girls can grow into beautiful, wise young women?" 

Zel shook his head. 

"Me neither, but they can." 

They entered a soft, green clearing just inside the forest. The ground was covered with a mixture of leaf mould, verdant moss and even a few patches of grass. A half-decayed log was crumbling into soil in the center of the clearing. Very small bushes and baby trees were starting to grow up in the empty spaces. 

Zelgadis stopped at the edge of the clearing. The place called up so many conflicting emotions in his heart that he wasn't sure what he felt. The last time he had been in this clearing he had walked out a chimera. He had seen it in his nightmares a hundred times since then, but it didn't feel like a place of nightmare. He had played here as a child. Looking around, he could almost see himself and his siblings acting out their elaborate games of make-believe, playing hide-and-seek, fighting. This was where he had trained. His muscles remembered every weary swing of ax and sword. The ghosts of his past lives seemed to hang in the air 

"Wow, this place has really become overgrown!" Arturos observed. "We'll have to trample it back into shape, won't we?" 

Zel nodded and drew his sword. "Shall we stick to just swords for now?" 

"Mother would kill us if we used magic." Arturos moved into an en guarde position. 

"I think you'll find I've improved since you last saw me." 

"So have I." 

For a long moment the brothers just stood there watching each other tensely. Somewhere a dog howled. A breeze rustled through the leaves. The fight began in a flurry of motion. 

If there had been spectators to the match, they would have been impressed. Both swordsmen were masters of their trade. At first, they seemed to be evenly matched, but it soon became clear that Arturos had the advantage. Zel was very good, but there were flaws in his technique. Arturos never faltered for a moment. 

Soon Arturos had Zel pinned to a tree with a sword resting against his throat. Zel knocked the blade aside and rolled out of the way. When he rose again, the sword was still at his throat. 

Arturos grinned savagely. "I believe I win." 

Zel scowled and nodded. "Rematch." 

"Sure." 

Arturos easily won all of the next five matches. "Shall we call it a night?" he asked, not unkindly. 

Zel hesitated for a long moment and then nodded curtly, sheathing his sword. What made his defeat even more bitter was that he was panting while Arturos wasn't winded at all. 

"You _have_ improved since our last match," Arturos said as they walked back to the house. "Maybe one of these years you'll actually beat me." He ruffled Zel's hair in a smug, older-brotherly way. Zel flinched. 

* * *

Rozlin looked up as her brothers' swords clattered back into the umbrella rack. "That was quick. How did it go?" 

Zel slumped into a chair. "I don't want to talk about it." 

"You weren't that bad. You just need a good opponent to beat you into shape. And a lighter sword. I told you when you got it that that sword is too heavy for you." 

"I like this sword. I just need to train until I'm strong enough to use it properly." 

"Zel, I don't know how to tell you this, but your natural physique is rather light-weight. You would do better to depend on speed rather than strength." 

Zel's temper snapped. "If I was still a chimera, you would..." He froze, appalled at what he had been about to say. 

"I would have lost that match? Then you should have come home sooner. Of course, I probably wouldn't have been here, but I'm sure you could have beaten any of the neighborhood children." 

Zelgadis didn't hear the taunts. He was rapidly sinking into one of his trademark depressions. How could he have wished, even for an instant, to be a chimera again? 

Amelia watched helplessly. She knew better than to try to comfort him when he was like this. 

Rozlin dropped into Zel's lap and threw her arms around his neck. "Cheer up, Zel-chan! Don't look so sad." Zelgadis stiffened, but then his arms slowly crept around his sister. 

Amelia turned green with envy. She wondered if she would ever have another chance to hug her long-lost sibling. 

Zel spoke around Rozlin's shoulder. "I trained very hard after you left home. I had promised myself that I would set out to seek my fortune as soon as I was strong enough to wield my sword easily. I was almost strong enough when Rezo came." ("He was," Rozlin confirmed.) "I can make myself that strong again." 

"Or you could just get a lighter sword." 

The brothers glared at each other around their sister's body. 

"Has life in a mercenary band has affected your personality, or were you always this much of a jerk? Whoever told you that you were witty was wrong." 

"Lighten up, Zel. If you still can't take honest criticism, you've got a lot of growing up left to do." 

Amelia was about to leap into the argument, but the lady of the house fortunately chose that moment to make her entrance. The level of tension in the room dropped immediately and dramatically. 

"Good evening," Mrs. Greywords said, showing no sign that she had noticed the fight. "I was about to go up to bed when I realized that I don't know where our newcomers are sleeping. Zel, would you prefer to sleep in your old room or the guest room?" 

Zel blushed. The guestroom had a double bed. "My old room is fine," he said hurriedly. "Amelia can have the guestroom." 

"I'm glad that's cleared up. Rozlin, it's bedtime. The rest of you are adults now, so I won't tell you when to go to bed. Just don't stay up too late." 

The 'adults' took the hint. They followed immediately. 

* * *

"Good night, Zel," Arturos whispered from the other side of the room. "It's good to have you back." 

"Good night, Arturos." Zel tucked his familiar quilt more firmly under his chin. I missed you too, he added silently. 

* * *

Zelgadis woke in sunlight. He looked around, too comfortable to move. His older brother was still asleep, loose strands of dark hair falling across his face. Arturos' side of the room was clean and unadorned to the point of starkness, as it had been ever since he stopped leaving his toys on the floor. 

Zelgadis sat up and stretched. His quilt was one that his aunt had made. It had an interesting geometric pattern in shades of blue and green. There was a picture pinned to the wall over his bed. It was a self-portrait he had done when he was fourteen. No one else would sit still long enough for him to get every hair and eyelash right. 

There was a small bookcase at the foot of the bed. Zel crawled out of bed and knelt in front of it. The lower shelf held the small but precious collection of books that belonged to Zel alone, not his family. Six of them were on shamanism. Three were military histories: one on the war of Monster's Fall and the others on more recent conflicts. Two were more general histories. There was a thin book on alchemy, which the bookseller had practically given him since no one else had ever shown any interest in it. The thick book beside it was a copy of an explorer's journal, full of careful pictures of sea creatures and notes on their behaviors. There were also two language-to-language dictionaries for help deciphering the more obscure magical texts. 

The upper shelf served as a display rack for the best of the little figures Zel had carved out of wood and stone over the years. They were all rather rough and amateurish, especially the earlier ones, but he had been proud of them. He stroked the lopsided ears of the fox with an affectionate finger and turned the miniature knight slightly so that he faced more perfectly straight ahead. 

The battered wooden wardrobe still held his old clothes. Zelgadis held them up against himself but they were too small now. He had grown several inches since he was last here, not all of them up. 

The room felt dusty with old memories. He had once loved every object in this half of the room. Some, like the books, he had loved passionately. Others, like the clothes, he had liked simply because they were useful and they were his. Now he felt as detached from them all as a snake from a shed skin. There was nothing here that belonged to the person he was now except the clothing hung over the bedpost and the boots next to them. He felt indifferent toward this room, but at the same time strangely tender. The spirit of the boy he had once been still lived in this room, even though years of pain and hardship had expunged that boy from Zelgadis himself. This room was a relic of his lost innocence, but it was not his home anymore. 

Zelgadis reached under the bed. He pulled out a dust-covered, distinctively shaped case. He brushed some of the dust off and opened it. The guitar inside seemed to glow in the early morning sunlight. He ran his fingers lovingly along the neck, silently fingering a few chords, but the decayed strings crumbled at his touch. He sighed. Maybe his mother would have a spare set. He shut the case again. 

The next object he pulled out was a brightly painted chest. He blew the dust off the lid, trying not to cough. It was a toy box. Each of the Greywords children had his or her own toy box because a common toy box had led to too many fights over who had touched whose toys and who owned which item. 

Zel pulled out the toys one by one. There was a toy sword, a chess set (a cheap one with wooden pieces and a foldable board that their parents had given Arturos and Zel to keep them from scratching up the valuable marble set downstairs), a stuffed blue dragon with tooth scars in its tail, building blocks, and, at the bottom of the chest, two miniature sorcerer's robes (one white, one black) and a small army of blue-uniformed lead soldiers (Arturos' army had worn red). 

Zelgadis looked under the bed again but all that was left under there was a pair of too-small slippers and a large colony of dust bunnies. 

"Are you going to play with those toys?" 

Zel twisted around. Arturos was propped up on one elbow, watching him with an amused smile. 

"No, I was just looking to see what's still here." Zel quickly started stuffing the toys back into the chest. 

* * *

**_Author's Note:_**Do you remember the author's note at the end of chapter 7 where I overanalyzed the relationship between Rezo and Zelgadis? Do you remember that I wrote, "more on that later"? I did. You can go back and check. You probably thought I just left that hanging there and forgot all about it. Well, I didn't! I just didn't bother to mention that "later" meant nine chapters later. The time has come. 

I don't think Rezo raised Zelgadis. As I pointed out in the author's note for chapter 7, Zelgadis doesn't even know whether Rezo is his grandfather or his great-grandfather. Their relationship seems purely professional. The hostility is all, "You turned me into a monster!" on one side and, "You traitorous minion!" on the other. "Bad parent/ungrateful child," doesn't come into it. Besides, why would Rezo go out in the pouring rain to offer Zel power if he could have done it over the breakfast table? 

If not Rezo, then who did raise Zelgadis? I think we should at least consider the possibility that Zel has a completely normal family (if you can use the word 'normal' to describe Greywords). It is even possible that he did not suffer abuse and neglect as a child. What a horribly angst-free thought! Of course, that would mean that we can't blame his awful personality on his family (except on Rezo for ruining his good looks). 

Considering Zel's approach to other people, I think he's most likely an only child, but I couldn't resist giving him siblings. Rozlin is, among other things, an explanation of why Slyphiel brings out his protective streak and why Lina caught him completely by surprise. Arturos is there to nurture his competitive drive. His parents helped shape his general approach to life. Of course, they are also full characters in their own right and it wouldn't be any fun if I told you _all_ the thoughts behind them. I know that Zelgadis seems somewhat out of place in such a happy family setting, but being a chimera for three years _would_ have changed him a bit. And the family isn't quite pure sweetness and light. Can you picture Zel growing up in such a family? Do you like them? Hate them? Think they are exactly like your family? 

The next chapter is a straight continuation of this one. I thought a twenty-page chapter would be a bit excessive so I split it in half. 


	17. Changing Relationships

**Chapter 17: Changing Relationships**

"Zel, dear, when were you planning to tell me that you're married to the princess of Seyruun?" Mrs. Greywords asked. 

"I...I'm not!...really. Actually, I could use some advice about that." Zelgadis didn't bother to ask how she'd found out about Amelia's rank or their supposed marriage. His mother would know. 

"Yes?" 

"I'm really not married to her, but there was an incident awhile ago that slightly resembled a wedding." 

Mrs. Greywords raised her eyebrows but didn't interrupt. 

"It didn't occur to me that anyone could mistake it for a real wedding until Amelia started calling me 'Zelgadis-sama'. Then a demon put these rings on our fingers as a joke - at least I hope it was just a joke. 

"I'm sure that the supposed 'wedding' meant nothing, but I can't convince Amelia of that. She's been looking at me as if we might be married for so long that it's starting to feel like the truth, even though I know it isn't." He ran his fingers through his tangled hair in frustration. 

"I trust that you are not taking advantage of the situation," Mrs. Greywords said coolly. 

"Of course not. My relationship to Amelia is utterly chaste, as it always has been." He thought guiltily of the few exceptions, but none of them really counted. 

His mother nodded. "Are you certain that the 'wedding' was invalid?" 

Zelgadis explained the circumstances. 

His mother nodded, still withholding a decision. "What are your feelings for Amelia?" 

If anyone else had asked him such a personal question, Zelgadis would have refused to answer, but this was his mother and he needed her help. He considered the question. 

"I'm fond of her. She's one of my dearest friends. She can be annoyingly immature at times, but we've been through a lot together." 

"Do you love her?" 

"No...Only as a friend." 

"She's the heir to one of the most powerful cities on this continent. Does that tempt you?" 

"Mother, you know that I have no desire to rule. My only ambition since I was a child was to be a sorcerer and swordsman." 

"I know." She smiled fondly at him for a moment before resuming her blank interrogation face. "One last question. Seyrunn's politics are very bloody. What will you do if someone tries to assassinate Amelia?" 

"I will kill him," Zelgadis replied without hesitation. 

"You would kill to protect her?" 

"Or to avenge her, even if it cost me my life. I would do that for any of my friends." 

"But especially for Amelia?" 

"No...but she is the most likely to need my protection. My other closest friends, Lina and Gourry, take care of each other. They are also much better at taking care of themselves than Amelia is. I _cannot_ convince her that the power of Justice won't protect her from all harm." 

Mrs. Greywords stood up. "I think I understand the situation now. I'll have a talk with Amelia." 

"Thank you." 

"Wait before you thank me. You don't know what effect my talk will have." 

* * *

"About Amelia," Arturos said as they headed into the woods. 

"What about her?" 

"I like her. You could do much worse." 

"What makes you think I'm interested in her?" 

"What am I supposed to think when you bring a girl home to meet your family?" 

"She's just a friend I happened to be traveling with. I only brought her along because she thought I would try to take over the world if she let me out of her sight for a few days." 

Arturos laughed. "Really?" 

"Something like that. Since when are you interested in my relationships with girls anyway? Having a girlfriend must be affecting your mind." 

"I _don't_ care. All I said was that I like Amelia." 

"Fine." 

"Fine." 

They tromped on in silence for several more minutes. 

"I like Mirai too," Zel said at last. "She'll be good for you." 

"Yeah." Arturos grinned. 

And that was all that needed to be said about that. 

"I think we're far enough from the house now," Arturos pointed out. 

Zel agreed. 

They moved to opposite sides of what would soon be a clearing. 

"Whenever you're ready, little brother," Arturos called out. 

Zel nodded. 

They started with small stuff like freeze arrows and worked their way up. By mutual agreement they avoided fire spells because forest fires are a pain to put out. To the surprise of both of them, it gradually became clear that Zel was the superior sorcerer. His spells were slightly more powerful than Arturos' and he cast them faster. As they moved into the more creative attacks, Zel managed to surprise Arturos with a whole series of obscure shamanist spells that Arturos had never heard of. They were no more powerful than the shamanist and black magic spells that Arturos was using, but they were much harder to predict. Arturos increasingly had to depend on generalized defensive tactics. 

The fight stretched on for a long time. The ground was blasted and littered with broken trees and pillars of dirt by the time Arturos made his fatal mistake. He was running out of energy. He knew that the only way he could win would be to catch his brother by surprise with an attack of overwhelming force. Unfortunately, the spell he picked was Gaav Flare. Zelgadis seized the opportunity and petrified his brother's body up to the neck. 

"A Gaav Flare? Don't you think that's a bit strong to use against your own brother?" 

"I don't understand it. Why didn't that work? There wasn't even a puff of smoke!" 

"Gaav's dead. Didn't you know that?" 

"I thought that was just a rumor." 

Zel shook his head. "I saw it with my own eyes." 

"Oh, come on! Is there no limit to your arrogance?" 

"I wasn't the one who killed him, but I was there. Anyway, that spell won't work anymore." 

"Rrrrg. If that spell had worked like it's supposed to..." 

"Do you want a rematch?" 

Conflicting emotions struggled over Arturos' face. At last he sighed. "No. You really are the better sorcerer." 

Zel grinned euphorically. "You don't know how long I've dreamed of this day." 

"Oh, I know." 

"I planned out a hundred different things I'd say or do once I finally defeated you." 

Arturos winced. 

"But somehow I don't feel like doing them anymore." He freed his brother from the petrification spell. "Let's just go home." 

"You've really grown up." 

"So have you. I thought I would have to nearly kill you before you would ever admit defeat." 

"Yeah, well. I'm still a better swordsman than you." 

"Only until I get used to this human body again." 

"We'll see. Damn, I was sure I could beat you in magic at least. I've been working as a professional sorcerer for the last five years!" 

"Professional sorcerers get lazy. Why do you think I work freelance?" 

"Because you're a bad tempered little freak with no team spirit?" 

"Do you want me to fry you again?" 

"Nah, we're too close to the house now. You might accidentally hit one of Mother's flowerbeds." 

"Gods forbid." 

"Well, you might get Rozlin to patch you up afterwards, but it still wouldn't be fun. Our Rosy is quite a good healer now, you know." 

"Mmm." 

* * *

The boys quietly let themselves in the back door. Arturos slipped straight up the stairs to change into clean, unscorched clothes. Zel was about to follow when he overheard voices. 

"I know exactly how you feel, Amelia-san," Rozlin's voice drifted in from the living room. "It is hard having a sibling vanish for years and not even knowing whether she's still alive. But don't give up hope. My brother came home. Maybe your sister will too." 

"I will never give up hope! But I wish she would at least send us a message to tell us she's alright. Even if she has a good reason for not coming home, it's inconsiderate to make family worry for so long." 

"Yes, it is," Rozlin agreed with feeling. 

Zelgadis winced. 

"Zel, is that you at the backdoor?" his mother called. 

"Yes, it is," he admitted, stepping into the room. 

Amelia was sitting on the couch, mending her cape. Rozlin was on the floor at her feet, grinding herbs in a mortar. Mrs. Greywords was in a chair opposite them, knitting. The golden light of early evening streaming in through the large windows cast a warm glow over the charming domestic scene. 

Rozlin spoke up importantly, "Father told us to tell you to go to his tower as soon as you got back. He wants to show you all his latest projects." 

Zelgadis nodded and walked back out of the house. 

As he left, Rozlin was saying, "I can still hardly believe that he's really here. Isn't it amazing how grown up and handsome he looks?" Zel closed the door before he heard the answer. 

* * *

Mr. Greywords' laboratory took the form of a miniature sorcerer's tower in the backyard. It was approximately three stories tall, just tall enough to see over the house. Zel opened the plain wooden door and looked up. Stone steps attached to the walls spiraled up into the distance. The laboratory itself was at the top of the tower. The bottom two stories were just there to support it. The structure might have reminded Zelgadis of Rezo's tower except that it was too familiar to remind him of anything other than itself. 

Zel peeked curiously behind the stairs. Sure enough, the trapdoor leading down to the underground experimentation chambers was still there. The door itself was new though. Zel wondered whether the old door had been destroyed by an explosion again or if it had just worn out. He shrugged and started up the stairs. 

He could have saved himself some effort by using a levitation spell (the tower was hollow in the middle for just that purpose), but he chose to take the steps using muscle power alone. He had always taken pride in using his body's natural strength rather than depending on magic. 

He paused at the top of stairs and looked around. Currently, the laboratory looked like the garden had tried to invade it. Bunches of flowers and grasses stuffed into vases of all descriptions crowded the shelves. Leaves littered most of the flat spaces. There were even some tree branches leaning against one of the walls. Zel's father was seated at the table in the center of the lab, looking intently at something. 

"You wanted to see me, Father?" Zel said to announce his presence. 

His father looked up. "Yes. Come take a look at this. I think you'll like it." 

Zelgadis walked around behind his father and took the seat next to him. 

Mr. Greywords held up a thin metal rod in one hand. "Watch. Windy Bladu." A transparent shimmering appeared at the top of the rod. Mr. Greywords picked up a leaf in his free hand and waved the metal rod at it. The top of the leaf fell onto the table. "It's a wind blade. It's even sharper than a scalpel and completely sterile. It should be of great use to surgeons and healers. It was your mother's idea. Actually, she suggested a fire blade. The advantage to fire is that it cauterizes as it cuts. The disadvantage is that scorches whatever it touches." 

"Is there any reason why the blade has to be that small?" 

"No, I can make it any size but, before you ask, no, I will not make you a wind sword." 

"Why not? It would be almost weightless but incredibly sharp. I can think of any number of people who would want such a sword." 

"No. I did not invent the wind blade so that the world could have yet another gimmicky weapon. Besides, I don't think it would block a steel sword reliably. It can't cut through metal." Mr. Greywords gestured to his cutting board, which was a square of solid steel. 

Before Zel could argue any more, Mr. Greywords held up a small, transparent rectangle. "I invented this magnifying device last year." 

He put his half-leaf down on the cutting board and used the wind blade to slice off a paper-thin cross-section of it. He knocked the crystal rectangle open, revealing that it was two thin sheets of flawless crystal connected by hinges so tiny that they were invisible to the casual glance. He carefully placed the leaf slice on one of the sides and flipped the other down on top. Immediately, a floating green line appeared in the air above the table. When Zelgadis looked closely, he could see tiny circles all along its length. 

"This is what the inside of a leaf looks like," Mr. Greywords said proudly. 

Zelgadis reached out to touch it but his hand passed right through. "An illusion spell?" 

"Yes, built right into the crystal. I hope to make the magnification level adjustable someday but I haven't figured out where to put a control knob yet. 

"Of course, not everything is flat," the inventor continued. He grabbed a crystal sphere from the center of the table and handed it to his son. 

Zel took the sphere. There was something inside already. A huge, three-dimensional illusion of it hung in the air above his hands. It was brown and more-or-less round. Zel turned the sphere in his hands. The illusion rotated to match his gestures without changing its location. It was an impressive piece of work, but no more than he would expect from his father. He pointed to the illusion. "What is this?" 

"A seed. My current project is a study of plants. I want to figure out how energy flows differ in different species. What makes a rose a rose rather than a reed or a willow?" 

"I came across something similar to that in my studies," Zelgadis said with interest. 

"Really?" 

"Living things know the shapes they are supposed to be. Even a tiny part knows the shape of the whole." Zelgadis searched for a way to explain less abstractly. "Let me demonstrate." 

He flipped open the crystal sphere and tipped the seed out into his hand. Then he grabbed a handful of wilting flowers out of a nearby bottle with his other hand. He chanted the words to his transformation-based anti-chimera spell. In his grip, the flowers changed into fuzzy-headed blades of grass. 

"It was a grass seed?" Zelgadis asked. 

"They're the easiest kind to collect," his father replied absently, focused on more important aspects of his son's demonstration. "Does that work with things other than seeds? I would expect a seed to contain the potential for the plant it will become." 

"Yes. I developed the spell for undoing chimeric transformations. Often the easiest way to unmake a chimera is to transform the parts that are the wrong species to match the parts that are unchanged from the original creature." 

"You developed that spell?" 

"Yes, I synthesized it from several other spells. I needed a transformation spell that would affect only part of a creature. It was one of several chimera unmaking strategies I tried." 

"What were the others?" 

Zelgadis explained them and even demonstrated a few. It was the first time he had ever been able to show his spells to someone who truly appreciated them. The only other person who had been interested in them at all was Amelia, and she just wanted to use them to right injustices or punish bad guys. His father followed every detail with fascination and even suggested ways of extending the spells for other uses. Zel had never enjoyed talking with his father this much before. Maybe the old man wasn't as crazy as he had always thought. 

At last, the old sorcerer leaned back with a contented sigh, "You have made me very happy." 

Zel stared at his father in surprise. 

"I always hoped that one of my children would follow in my footsteps. Zelgadis, these spells are worthy of one of my projects. They show a true grasp of magical theory combined with practicality and good craftsmanship. They also prove that you know how to track down obscure spells and put them to use." 

Zelgadis was absolutely stunned by this rare shower of praise. 

His father smiled with satisfaction. "I always suspected you would have potential if you ever got over that foolish obsession with swords." 

"I'm a very good swordsman! I don't know why everyone in this house..." 

"I'm sure you are, but you're wasted on it." 

That shut Zelgadis up. "What do you mean?" 

"You have a very good mind, my son, yet what are you using it for? Picking fights with bandits? Blowing up things on royal orders?" 

"Well, yes. And tracking down rare magical artifacts." 

"Now that is something I approve of! I spent many happy years of my youth tracking down magical artifacts." 

"You did?" 

"That's how I met your mother, in fact. Hasn't anyone told you that story?" 

"No." 

"Remind me to tell it to you sometime. 

"Zelgadis, of all my children you may be the only one with a true talent for magical theory. Rozlin has potential but she's so focused on learning healing spells that she has no interest in anything else. Arturos is hopeless. I'm very fond of him but he will never be more than a mercenary. He has no sense of intellectual curiosity. I think you have the potential to be a truly great sorcerer like so many of our ancestors. You are free to choose your own path of course, but I hope that you will continue to study magic." 

"I...I'll think about it." 

"Good. You might consider joining the Sorcerer's Guild too." 

"What, that bunch of petty, infighting lunatics?" 

"You don't have to get involved in guild politics. I joined in order to get access to the guild library." 

"I didn't know you were a member." 

"Oh yes. I have a blue robe hanging up somewhere in the house." 

* * *

Zel and his father were deep in a conversation about plants when Rozlin came to collect them for supper. 

As soon as Zel stepped in the door, Amelia grabbed him and dragged off to somewhere they could talk privately. She was almost bouncing with excitement. 

"Zelgadis-san, I've found a solution to our problem!" she exclaimed triumphantly. "Your mother explained this concept to me called 'annulment'! I think it will work for us!" 

Zelgadis buried his face in his hand. It was his 'if we ignore it, it isn't a real marriage' argument put into legal terms. Why hadn't he thought of that? He was supposed to be an adult so why was it that his mother could still solve all his insolvable problems? 

"Zelgadis-san?" Amelia asked, concerned. 

Zelgadis looked up with a rueful not-quite-a-smile. "Yes, that sounds perfect." 

"I thought you'd be happier about it," Amelia muttered. 

"I am happy about it. I just...We can start looking for someone to perform the annulment as soon as we get back to Atlas City." 

"Okay!" Amelia's agreement sounded wholeheartedly enthusiastic but her eyes, as she followed Zelgadis down the stairs, were thoughtful. 

"Are you two finished?" Arturos asked pointedly. "The rest of us are hungry." 

Amelia blushed and looked guilty. Zel just nodded expressionlessly. They quickly took their seats at the table. 

* * *

"Wow, your hair is so thick!" Amelia exclaimed admiringly. 

"Bushy hair is our family curse," Rozlin sighed as she yanked the fluffy mass back into its habitual braid in preparation for going to bed. 

"No," Zelgadis retorted coolly. "Having Shabranigdo sealed in our bodies is our family curse. Bushy hair is just an inconvenience." 

"You mean that thing about us being descended from Lei Magnus?" Arturos raised derisive eyebrows. "That's just a family legend." 

"I was thinking more about Rezo," Zelgadis replied calmly but with a dangerous glint in his eye. 

"Rezo?" the others replied, startled. 

"He summoned a piece of Shabranigdo which turned out to be sealed inside his own eyes. That 's how he died." 

"That...explains many things," Mr. Greywords muttered. 

His wife nodded in agreement. 

Arturos looked deeply surprised, thoughtful and a little scared. 

"Grandpa Rezo's dead?" Rozlin wailed piteously. 

Her formerly chimeric brother grimaced. "I wish you wouldn't call him that. He was an evil, hypocritical man who was willing to sacrifice the whole world for the sake of his own selfish desires." 

"I liked him," Rozlin muttered sulkily, well aware that she was alone in that opinion. 

"Zel, you shouldn't speak so harshly about him," Mrs. Greywords reprimanded. "If it wasn't for him, neither of us would be here today." 

"I know, but I can only be grateful to him for saving my life for so long. The things he did to me afterward more than balance it out." 

"Rezo-san saved your life?" Amelia repeated in surprise. 

"Yes." Mrs. Greywords smiled at her middle child. "Zelgadis was difficult child right from the beginning. He tried to come into the world feet first. If Rezo had not happened to pass through town that day, I would probably have died and taken my baby with me. I will always owe him a debt of gratitude for that day." 

"Yes, but did you have to let him give me such an awful name?" Zel asked wretchedly. 

Amelia leapt up to protect him from himself. "I think 'Zelgadis' is a lovely name!" 

Zel, who had already been blushing at the description of his birth, now blushed much redder. "People always mispronounce it and no one knows what it means," he complained weakly. Hearing Amelia pronounce his name without tacking an honorific onto the end was an odd sensation. 

The rest of the family gave their blushing son or brother knowing looks. Rozlin giggled. 

Zel scowled at them and changed the subject. "Father, how did you and mother meet? You said to ask you later." 

"Ah, yes." Mr. Greywords sat up straighter in his chair. "I was searching for the legendary staff of Xo. The clues had led me to a certain cave located halfway up a sheer cliff. Unfortunately, it turned out that a family of wyverns were using the cave as a nest." 

"Wyverns?" Amelia interrupted. 

"A cousin of the _gens dracona_. They are much smaller than dragons but even more vicious. They attacked me as soon as I entered the cave. I backed away, forgetting that I was standing on the verge. The fall broke my leg and gave me a concussion. While I was lying there helpless, trying to fend off the wyverns, your mother came to my rescue. She fought off the beasts and then healed me." 

"Then what happened?" Rozlin asked breathlessly. She had never heard this story before. 

Mrs. Greywords smiled nostalgically. "We turned out to be headed in the same direction so we decided to travel together. We worked so well together that we ended up forming a partnership and eventually getting married." 

"Did you ever find the staff?" asked Arturos, who believed in paying attention to details. 

"Yes. I believe it's in the attic." 

The Greywords children nodded. They knew about the attic and the basements. 

"That reminds me," Zel said, "Do you, by any chance, have the books of Hekron the Red?" 

"Hekron the Red?" Mr. Greywords repeated. He exchanged a questioning look with his wife. 

"He founded a branch of the Sorcerer's Guild in Sairaag devoted to researching kopii and chimera making techniques." 

"Oh, I remember now. Yes, we did find a collection of books like that - I am almost certain they belonged to Somebody the Red - but we gave them to Rezo several years ago. He said something about a young girl who showed a lot of promise in those areas." 

"That would be Eris," Zel muttered. "Which means that the books were probably in Rezo's Sairaag lab. Full circle." 

"Lina-san is going to be annoyed," Amelia commented thoughtfully. 

"Did you need those books for something, Zel?" Mrs. Greywords inquired with concern. 

"No, not at all. I was just curious about their whereabouts." 

"Good." Mrs. Greywords stood up. "Now, I believe that it is bedtime. Good night, everyone." 

The others quickly followed her upstairs. 

* * *

Between visits from all the neighbors, who wanted to see how the Greywords boys were growing up, and household chores like repainting the house, digging new flowerbeds, replacing damaged floorboards, dusting, mopping floors, and polishing silverware, furniture and the swords over the fireplace (Mrs. Greywords believed in taking advantage of captive labor while she had it), the remaining few days passed much too quickly. Even Mr. Greywords got caught in the frenzy once he discovered that helping with chores was the only way he could talk with Zelgadis about magical theory. 

The Greywords family let Zelgadis and Amelia go on the morning of the fifth day only after they made Zelgadis promise to come back soon. ("Within a year," his mother said pointedly.) 

They also expressed the hope of seeing Amelia again. Mrs. Greywords told her, "You will always be welcome in our house, with or without Zelgadis, but bring him with you if you can." 

Rozlin hugged Amelia warmly, "Promise that that you'll come visit me when I arrive in Seyruun next year." 

Amelia hugged Rozlin back just as warmly. "Of course! No true friend would let you be lonely in a new city." 

"If you ever decide to join a mercenary troop, Zel, I'll give you a recommendation. You're a passable swordsman and a good sorcerer." Arturos said. 

"I'll keep that in mind." 

Mr. Greywords just clasped his son's hand. "Goodbye, Zelgadis. Remember what I told you." 

"Goodbye, Father. Goodbye, Mother, Arturos, Roz-chan." 

Zelgadis turned and left without a backward glance. Backward glances only made parting more painful. Amelia looked back over her shoulder and waved enthusiastically until they were out of sight. 

* * *

**_Author's Note:_**Hmm... I can't make this the only chapter without an author's note but there's not too much more to say about Zel's family. The author's note for the last chapter covered everything important. I'd still love to hear what you think of them though....I know! 

It's easy to get caught up in the spell casting side of magic, but magical artifacts are at least as important. These can range in value and power from the magical amulets Lina makes in the second episode of Slayers, to Zangulus' Howling Sword, to the Shadow Reflector that causes Lina and Naga so much embarrassment, to god-made artifacts like the Sword of Light and the train in Slayers TRY. Some great mages, like Rei Magnus, are remembered for the spells they created, but many more owe their reputations to the powerful objects they left behind them. Maybe even Rezo will someday be remembered more for items like the Howling Sword than for all the people he healed. (He certainly won't be remembered for summoning Shabranigdo since practically no one knows about that.) I somehow doubt that Zel's father will ever be famous, but he is a great sorcerer anyway. I suspect that in thirty years everybody will be using his inventions without ever thinking about where they came from. Maybe they already are. It will be interesting to see how magical technologies mix with non-magical technologies from the New World in the future. Both cultures could change dramatically in the years to come if they take advantage of each other's knowledge. (For a cool take on that last idea, take a look at http://pixelscapes.com/slayers/demiurge/ ) 


	18. Revelations and Restorations

**Chapter 18: Revelations and Restorations**

"Men and lady, I have an announcement to make," Hal announced when the caravan stopped for the night the evening after leaving Atlas City. "The trading in Atlas City went very well." There were weak cheers. "In fact, this whole journey has been unusually profitable, in no small part because you stopped bandits from stealing so much as a copper coin from us." There were more cheers and some enthusiastic grins. "Therefore, I've got a little something to thank you for all your good work. That tavern across the street just got a shipment of top-quality Zephilian wine and I bought an entire keg just for us." The cheers this time were deafening. 

* * *

Seymor nudged his friend. "Go on. Ask them. You'll never stop wondering if you don't." 

Everyone turned to look at Akio. 

Akio took a deep gulp of his drink. He cleared his throat. "Zel, Amy...who was that red-haired girl I saw you with back in Sairaag? At the restaurant? This is going to sound stupid, but...she looked a lot like...Lina Inverse." 

"That's because she was Lina Inverse," Zel said calmly, sipping his wine. 

"The real Lina Inverse?" 

"The one and only. (I hope)" 

"Then where was her partner?" 

"With her," Amelia said blankly. "You must have noticed Gourry-san. He's tall with long, blond hair, and he eats almost as much as Lina-san." 

"Yes, we saw the swordsman, but where's the woman she used to travel with?" 

"Woman?" Zelgadis repeated. Slyphiel? Martina? Filia? "What did she look like?" 

Akio's eyes focused on a mental image on the far side of the table. "She was definitely a woman, very much a woman." He held his hands out in front of his chest to indicate just how much woman she was. "She had black hair and a leather bikini and a laugh that I will never forget." He shuddered. "I think her name was something like Nada the Snake, but I can't remember." 

Over the course of the description Amelia had switched from blankly shaking her head to looking stricken. "Not 'Naga the White Serpent'?" she breathed. 

"Yes, that sounds right. How did you know?" 

"Was she a powerful and beautiful white sorceress who traveled from land to land healing the sick and righting wrongs?" Amelia asked urgently 

"Uh, no. She was a powerful and beautiful _black_ sorceress who slaughtered my band without mercy and then stole all our treasure." 

"Oh, can't be her then." 

"After they burned our camp to the ground, she and that Lina Inverse ate a month's worth of food and took every last gold coin and trinket. They were still fighting over the treasure when they walked out of the camp over our scorched and frozen bodies." Akio was almost in tears at the memory. 

"That does sound like Lina," Zelgadis commented. 

"It sounds like Gracia too," Amelia admitted. 

"She _was_ beautiful, though. She had this body like...like...I can't describe it. Like perfection." He sketched the outlines in broad hand gestures. "And her breasts..." He drew in his breath in a low whistle, and then remembered he was in mixed company. He coughed in embarrassment. "Anyway, she was good looking." 

Amelia was upset, but not because of his leering. "Oh, Gracia," she sighed. "Why did you turn to the dark side? You were supposed to be Naga the _White_ Serpent." 

"How do you know these people anyway?" Hal asked suspiciously. 

Zelgadis answered, "We used to travel with Lina Inverse and Gourry Gabriev. I don't know this Naga person. Amelia?" 

"When we were children," Amelia said tearfully, "my sister and I used to pretend that we were great heroes saving the world. She called herself 'Naga the White Serpent' and I called myself...well, that's not important. My sister was tall and beautiful just like Akio-san described, but Lina-san never told me that she used to travel with my sister. Don't you think she would have told me, Zelgadis-san?" 

"She had no way of knowing that 'Naga' was your sister." 

"Your sister, huh?" Akio looked Amelia over appraisingly. His eyes lingered in the chest area. "You do look a bit like her, come to think of it. At least, your hair's the same." 

"Lina Inverse was the one who taught you that fishing spell!" Yosh suddenly realized. 

Amelia smiled. "Yes." 

"Wow, what was it like travelling with a celebrity?" 

"Insane." Zelgadis scowled. "Frustrating. Sometimes terrifying." He looked over thoughtfully at Amelia. "Celebrities tend to be very different from what you expect. They have personalities just like anyone else, only louder. But sometimes they can be very good friends." 

"Yeah, think of the kind of favors someone with that much power could do for you." Seymor grinned. 

"No, not for that reason. I've known several celebrities. I used to work for Rezo and I hated him. Then I met Lina and she's the best friend I ever had, not because she ever did me any favors. Just because...because she cared. Because she held onto me and wouldn't let go." 

"What about me?" Amelia protested angrily. "I'm your friend too!" 

"You are..." Zelgadis tried to find words to express his feelings for Amelia and how they differed from his feelings for Lina. "...my friend too," he finished lamely. 

Amelia still looked angry. 

"You're a very good friend." Zelgadis hastened to clarify. "Every time I look in a mirror, I think about how much I have to be grateful to you for. You gave me back my humanity. Even finding the Clair Bible...we wouldn't have done that if you hadn't insisted on helping those priests. And I needed the books in your library to finish my chimera spells. You helped me perfect them too, against that chimera maker." 

"Yes, I helped you with the spells." Amelia still did not seem entirely mollified. 

"Yes." Zelgadis couldn't think what more she wanted him to say. "Thank you," he tried. Then he noticed how the other caravaners were grinning at him. He turned red and shut his mouth. 

"Now, about Lina Inverse holding onto you..." Seymor prompted. 

Zelgadis pressed his lips together and shook his head. Then he opened his mouth to say, "How much have I drunk?" 

"I don't remember. A lot," Geoff supplied helpfully. 

Zelgadis buried his face in his hand. "I forgot that my alcohol tolerance is much lower as a human. How could I forget something that important?" 

Amelia patted his arm sympathetically. 

"I'm going to bed now," Zelgadis announced, standing up. 

Amelia started to get to her feet too, but Hal forestalled her. "No, I'll take him. I'm about ready for bed anyway. You stay here and enjoy the party." 

The path Zelgadis took to the door was not quite straight, but he managed to walk it unaided. As he and Hal left the bar, the other four caravan guards returned to their conversation. 

"Amy, what's all this talk about humanity? Did Zel use to be something else?" 

"That would explain why he was so bad with a sword at first." 

"And why he didn't know how to shave." 

"And the brand-new armor." 

Seymor and Akio exchanged glances. "Why didn't we figure that out sooner?" 

"So, Amy, what was he before?" 

"He was..." Amelia considered what to tell them. Fortunately, she didn't like strong wine so she had only managed to drink two glasses so far. As a result, her head was relatively clear. Hmm. She saw nothing wrong with letting them know that Zelgadis had been a chimera, but Zelgadis obviously didn't want them to know. "He was under an evil spell." 

"Cool! Who put it on him?" Yosh asked. 

"Um...someone he trusted...someone who should never have betrayed the bonds of family to mutilate his own grandson!" 

"His grandfather? That's awful!" 

"So magic runs in his family?" Akio broke in. 

"Um, yes." 

"Leave her alone, boys," Geoff said sternly. "Those secrets aren't hers to tell." 

"Tell us more about Lina Inverse and the White Serpent then," Akio said unrepentantly. 

"I'd rather hear more about you," Amelia demurred tactfully. "Tell us about your family, Yosh-san." 

* * *

Zelgadis stumbled into Amelia's room very early the next morning and buried his face in the bed. 

Amelia stared at him in surprise, rubbed her eyes, yawned, and stared some more. "Zelgadis-sama?" 

"Amelia," he groaned, his voice muffled by the bedcovers, "can you do something about this headache? I think I'm going to throw up but I don't think I can make it to the lavatory." 

Amelia quickly jumped out of bed. A raywing bubble helped her get Zelgadis to the lavatory before he could mess up her room. She waited patiently until the sounds of vomiting ceased and Zelgadis stumbled out of the lavatory again. 

He squinted his eyes against the faint dawn light. "I have never felt this sick in all my life," he declared. He looked like zombie with an intestinal virus and smelled even worse. 

Amelia debated with herself whether she really wanted to get any closer to him, but he _was_ her friend. She stepped forward and placed her hands on either side of his face. 

"This is a spell for neutralizing poisons..." 

"Don't shout!" Zelgadis protested weakly. 

Amelia rolled her eyes and tried not to inhale. She continued more quietly, "...but maybe it will work for hangovers too. You look poisoned." She spared him a lecture about the evils of drunkenness only because she knew that he had done it by accident. The hangover had already punished him enough for his crime. 

The spell spread through Zel's body, taking away the sick feeling and leaving cleanliness in its wake. "Thank you," Zelgadis whispered as the last of the poison vanished from his body. 

Then he realized that he was standing in his pajamas and bare feet in front of the lavatory and Amelia, also in pajamas and bare feet, was holding his face in her hands. Amelia realized the same thing a moment later. They sprang apart. 

"Um, good night," Amelia said, watching her erstwhile patient hurry back to his room. 

Zelgadis didn't say anything. The situation was just too embarrassing. 

Amelia had several more hangovers to cure in the morning. 

* * *

It was a beautiful day. The sun was warm but not too hot. The wagons were rolling smoothly down the well-paved road. Akio, Seymor and Zelgadis were having a friendly argument over what features the ideal sword would have. 

Yosh surfaced from daydreams of slaying dragons. "What's that city up ahead?" 

"That's Lenos," Hal told him. "It's a small city but I like it. It has clean streets and a low crime rate." 

"There's a large temple of Ceiphied there," Amelia said slowly, searching her memory, "not as large as the one in Seyruun, of course, but still pretty big. It also has one of the best white magic schools in the area." 

Hal nodded approvingly. "The school actually teaches a variety of subjects, not just magic. The city is full of clever young people with too much time on their hands who think they are even more clever than they actually are." He shrugged. "There are worse things a city can be full of." 

The road ahead was blocked from edge to edge by a huge detour sign. There was a tired-looking man sitting in front of the sign. He straightened up at the sight of the travelers. 

"You may want to avoid Lenos just now," he said. "It's haunted." 

"What happened?" Hal asked. 

The roadblock man sighed. "One of the temple novices apparently broke an ancient seal that was binding some rather nasty ghosts. We'd punish him but no one can find him. Several heroes and most of the priests who were not possessed in the first wave have tried to exorcise the ghosts but all have failed. In the meantime, we're advising anyone who does not have urgent business in the city to stay away." 

"We'll do that then," Hal said. "How long is the detour?" 

"Not too long. You just have to take country roads around the edges of the city. It will probably add about half a day to your trip." 

Hal nodded and yanked the head of the lead horse in the direction of the side road. 

"No!" Amelia shouted, leaping on top of the Detour sign. "We cannot let malicious ghosts break down the lines of transportation and communication between cities! Now that we know of this menace, we must do everything in our power to end the reign of the evil dead over this peaceful city! Hal-san, Yosh-san, brave adventurers of this caravan, you have heard the call. Now FIGHT in the name of Justice!" 

Stunned, Yosh reached for his bow. Hal took a more levelheaded approach to her demands. "What do you want us to do? Swords and arrows are no good against spirits and, besides, we have a schedule to follow. We can't afford to get caught here." 

"Hal's right," Zelgadis said before Amelia could launch into another speech. "You and I are the only people in this caravan capable of fighting ghosts." 

"Then will _you_ at least fight with me for Justice, Zelgadis-san?" 

Zelgadis turned to Hal. "Is it alright if Amelia and I stay in Lenos for a day or two and then catch up with the caravan?" 

"I guess so," Hal said reluctantly. "Are you sure?" 

"I need to conduct some business in the city in any case. Amelia and I should be able to protect ourselves from the ghosts." 

"Right!" Amelia piped up. 

"Alright. Don't take too long or I'll get worried." The caravan rumbled onto the side road while the detour man let the two mages though the roadblock. 

"I didn't expect you to agree to this so easily," Amelia remarked as the pair approached the haunted city. "You really are becoming a better person!" 

"I don't intend to fight the ghosts unless we have to," Zelgadis replied. "I'm doing this because this is the perfect opportunity to get our so-called marriage annulled." 

"Well, _I_ intend to fight the ghosts," Amelia pouted. 

"Then you'll have to do it alone. I know only a few spells for dealing with the undead and none for dealing with possession." 

Amelia did not speak to him again until they were well inside the city, and then it was only to say, "I think the temple is this way." 

Lenos was a gloomy place. Thick, dark clouds hovering over the city foreboded the king of all thunderstorms although no rain was falling. There were few people on the streets and they were glancing at each other warily as they hurried about their business. The marketplace was almost empty. There were a few carts selling food and several selling protective charms, and that was it. Occasionally, ghosts would try to grab Amelia or Zelgadis, but an elmekia lance or two easily got rid of them. The temple, when they reached it, looked surprisingly normal. There were two priests sitting in front of the entrance, playing checkers. 

"We need to consult a priest about a legal matter," Zelgadis told them. "Who should we talk to?" 

Before Amelia could even begin her rant about the irresponsibility of people who had the power to help the afflicted city but ignored it to play checkers or pursue their own selfish goals, the priests attacked the intruders. 

Zelgadis took one look at their blank eyes and slavering jaws, and screamed, "Look out! They're possessed!" 

Fortunately, the ghosts had much weaker defenses against magic than their priestly hosts would have had. Zelgadis and Amelia left them unconscious and walked into the temple. 

Many hallways, priests and ghosts later, they finally found the man they were looking for, the high priest. He pulled them into his room, glancing warily up and down the hallway. The room was large and circular with a shallow pool in the middle. There was a tall statue at the center of the pool which represented either a dragon or a fire. 

The high priest was an old man in rich robes with a long, white beard and a crystal-tipped staff. "How did you manage to get here?" he asked after slamming the door shut behind his visitors. "Even I dare not leave this room!" 

"How did you manage to escape possession?" Zelgadis returned suspiciously. 

"This room is the heart of the temple," the priest explained. "The ghosts can not pass through its walls. As long as we stay in here, we shall be safe." 

Amelia frowned thoughtfully. "If this is the holy center of the temple, a purification spell cast here should affect the entire city. This is where we need to be so we can get rid of the ghosts! Right?" 

"Uh, yes. That is correct," the high priest confirmed. 

"So why haven't you done that already?" Amelia asked. 

The priest looked nervous. "I cannot cast such a strong spell alone." 

"Then why don't you get some of the other priests to help? Why haven't you brought any of them into this room?" 

"I must assume that anyone outside this room is already lost," the priest said sadly, but there was a shifty look in his eyes. 

"Why didn't you bring them in here and perform an exorcism on them? Surely a high priest like you could handle that." 

"You ask too many questions!" the priest snarled, swinging the crystal end of his staff at Amelia's head. 

Zelgadis' sword blocked the staff before it could hit. "I presume that you are one of the ghosts?" he grunted around clenched teeth. 

Amelia backed out of the way of the fight. The possessed priest swung his staff in a new attack. He had surprising strength for such an old man. Zelgadis blocked the staff again. 

"I am the leader of the ghosts," the possessed man growled in reply. "I was a great warlord before the *&%#ing priests of this temple annihilated my army and imprisoned our souls. I did not know that white magic could be used for such evil." 

The ghost must have been a great swordsman in life. However, a staff is not a sword. If Zelgadis had been willing to kill or seriously injure his opponent, he could have won quickly. As it was, the fight stretched on inconclusively. 

Off to one side where the priest couldn't see her, Amelia knelt down and began a whispered chant. "Megido Flare!" 

On the last word, she grabbed the priest's ankles. A pillar of blinding light shot up from her hands, through the priest's body and up through the ceiling. When it faded, the priest dropped his staff. He blinked repeatedly and looked around with wondering gaze. He fell to his knees beside Amelia and embraced her. Zelgadis ran to defend her, but he needn't have worried. 

"Thank you!" the priest cried. "Thank you! How can I ever thank you enough?" 

"The best way to thank me is to help me free this city from these villainous ghosts," Amelia answered fiercely. 

"No, that would be another debt that _I_ owe _you_." The high priest helped Amelia to her feet. "Will you two help me save Lenos?" 

"With all my heart!" Amelia shouted joyfully. Zelgadis sheathed his sword and nodded. 

Having obtained their consent, the high priest got straight to business. "We'll need three more people for the spell. Let's bring them to this room and exorcise them as you suggested." 

Zelgadis went out into the hall and grabbed the first three people he found. Amelia went with him to guard his back. It would be awful if Zelgadis got possessed before they could cast the spell. 

They got the priest, priestess, and temple novice into the room and ghost-free without significant difficulty. Then the high priest arranged them around the points of a hexagram centered on the pool. He took the north-most point. Amelia took the south-most point. The other four filled in the points between the most powerful white mages. 

While the high priest explained the ritual they were about to perform, Amelia cast a basic amplification spell to power up her new magic-amplifiers. Threads of bluish-white fire shot from her forehead to her ankles, from ankles through her belt clasp to her wrists, between her wrists, and in a circle around the outside of the star. The pentagram flared brightly and vanished, leaving her with a feeling of greatly increased power. 

"Ready?" the high priest asked. Everyone else nodded. 

They began the ritual. As they chanted, winds came out of nowhere to ruffle their hair and clothing. Energy crackled through the lines of the hexagram. The air seemed to thicken. Tension built. The statue of Cephied burst into brilliant, white radiance, which spread outward through the circle of spell casters, through the walls of the room, through the temple, and outward through the streets of the city. Wherever it touched, ghosts shrieked and left the bodies they were possessing. The dome of light continued to spread until it covered the entire city. 

* * *

"I wonder what they're doing right now," Yosh muttered to himself. 

Geoff overheard him. "Zel and Amy, you mean?" 

"Yes. Why are they always going off alone together?" 

Geoff studied him seriously for a long moment. "Yosh, have you told Amelia how you feel about her?" 

"What? I don't...I mean...uh...well, yeah." 

"And?" 

Yosh scowled and hunched his shoulders defensively. "What do think? She said no." 

"Zel?" 

"He isn't her boyfriend! Amelia-san herself told me that. What a heartless idiot." Yosh muttered the last part under his breath. 

"No kidding," Akio agreed just as sub-vocally. 

"Yeah, I can't figure out their relationship either." Geoff replied thoughtfully. "It's the weirdest one I've ever seen. Even if they aren't in love (and I'm not sure one way or the other about that), they're bound together by experiences and secrets that they've chosen not to share with us. They've shared our path for a while but they seem to belong to another world. In a week, they'll go back to that world and forget us." 

Yosh scuffed his boots along the path. "I hope they're okay." 

"I'm sure they're fine," Hal said. 

"Yeah," Akio agreed, "If it was anyone else, I'd say they were ghost fodder, but those two will come back, no problem." 

"I wouldn't even put it past them to exorcise the ghosts," Seymor grinned. 

"Look." Geoff pointed behind them, where a pure white light was rising over the horizon like a mid-day sunrise. 

"I don't believe it. I just don't believe it," Seymor gasped. 

"Do you think _they_ caused that?" Yosh asked. 

"Who else?" 

Akio shook his head slowly, visions of Lina Inverse rampaging through his memory. "I'm just glad they're on our side." 

* * *

The dome of light began to shrink. As it moved inward, it took the ghosts with it. They shrieked even louder and battered at the glowing wall with insubstantial hands, but they were helpless against it. By the time the dome shrank to the size of the temple, it was full of ghosts flittering back and forth desperately. By the time it shrank to the size of the hexagram, it was opaque from the density of the translucent bodies within. It continued to shrink. Finally, it vanished under the statue. The six around the statue said the last few words necessary to bind the seal in place again. They let their hands drop. 

In the ensuing silence, the sobs of the boy at the foot of the statue were very clear. The temple novice ran to the boy and grabbed his shoulders. "Jordy! Jordy, are you alright?" 

"I...I'm sorry," the boy sobbed. "I will _never_ EVER play with forbidden magic again. I promise!" 

The high priest left the lesser members of his temple to soothe the boy who had caused all the trouble. "I'll decide on a suitable punishment later," he said. "For now, the boy has been punished enough." 

He escorted Zelgadis and Amelia to his office and offered them seats. "You have saved us all. Is there anything I can do to repay you?" 

"Actually, yes," Zelgadis said. "We came here to ask for your advice...and help." 

Amelia reluctantly agreed. She would have preferred not to request anything for herself, but they really did need the priest's help. 

The high priest stroked his beard. "What is the trouble?" 

"We may have...accidentally gotten married. We need you to tell us whether it was a valid wedding and, if so, how to annul it," Zelgadis said, blushing. He explained what had happened. 

The priest looked thoughtful. "I see. I've never heard of such a thing happening before, but I will do my best to help you. Let me make sure I understand the situation. You do not wish to be married?" 

"No," Zelgadis replied calmly. 

"No," Amelia echoed but there was something in her eyes that didn't quite agree. 

The old man nodded wisely. "You have not consummated the marriage?" 

"Consum..?" Amelia began to ask. 

"No, we haven't," Zelgadis interrupted. "It means the same thing as 'sleeping together', Amelia." Zelgadis managed to maintain a dignified expression despite the redness of his face. 

Amelia considered that. "But we..." 

"You kissed me once. That does not add up to consummating a marriage. Trust me on this." 

"Okay." 

The priest chose to believe them. The girl was too innocent not to be a virgin. He cleared his throat and tried to remember his next question. "You said it was conducted in the name of a mazoku, not a god?" 

"Yes," the young people said together. 

"Well, it sounds to me like you could not possibly be bound by this, but I would like to talk with Amelia-san privately before I declare that officially." 

Zelgadis stood up. "I'll wait outside." 

Once they were alone, the priest gave Amelia a piercing look from under his bushy eyebrows. "Are you sure that you want me to annul this marriage? You seem somewhat hesitant." 

"Yes, annul it! I refuse to accept a marriage that was forced upon us by the cruelty of monsters and the will of the mazoku! I sometimes think that I might like to marry Zelgadis-san someday," she admitted with a blush. "But not now - I'm only sixteen - and not in this way. If I ever do marry Zelgadis-san, it will be because we choose to be married, and we will pledge our love for each other in the name of a true god under the eyes of our family and friends. I will not accept less than that!" 

"You realize that you may not have another chance to marry him in any sense?" 

"I would rather not marry at all than marry someone who doesn't love me. I _will not_ force myself on Zelgadis-san. Ever. It would be unjust, and it would not make him love me. Besides, I'm not sure I want to marry such a selfish person." 

"You are very wise for your years. Zelgadis-san, you may come back in now." 

Zelgadis walked in nonchalantly, trying to look as if he had not been listening at the door. 

The priest raised his hands. "In the name of blessed Cephied, I declare that you are not and never have been married to each other." He lowered his hands and said in a more normal tone of voice, "That seems like a small repayment for your help. Is there anything else Lenos can do for you?" 

"We would have helped you for no reward at all," Amelia said. 

"I don't suppose you can get rid of these rings?" Zelgadis stripped off his left glove. 

The priest studied both rings for several minutes before having to admit defeat. "If it's any comfort, I can't sense any energy coming from them," he said to try to soften the blow. "If there's any spell bound into them, it must be a very subtle one." 

Zelgadis grimaced, thinking that 'subtle' described the giver perfectly. 

"I'm sorry I couldn't be more help," the high priest added helplessly. 

"I didn't really expect you to be able to get the rings off, and that annulment is a great relief to us," Zelgadis said. "Don't worry about it." 

The sun was shining down upon the city and people were beginning to emerge from their houses again as the young sorcerer and sorceress left Lenos. 

* * *

"Zel, Amy, can I speak with you for a minute?" Hal touched his mages' shoulders. They followed him to the lead wagon where he pulled out two sheets of paper. "We'll reach Seyruun tomorrow so I want to give these to you tonight." 

"What are they?" Amelia asked. 

"Letters of recommendation. You've both been excellent employees. I couldn't ask for better. You saved our cargo and probably our lives more than once during the trip and you were a pleasure to travel with. I wish I could keep you but I know you have other business. I'm just glad you stayed with the caravan as long as you did." 

"That's high praise," Zelgadis said. He spoke calmly but his eyes shone with emotion. 

Amelia threw her arms around the caravan master. "Thank you, Hal-san! It was a pleasure to travel with you too! I really enjoyed earning a salary and helping with the caravan." 

"Enough of that." Hal pushed her away gently. He had to wipe his eyes before continuing. "I just need to ask you your full names so I can put them on the letters of recommendation." 

"Zelgadis Greywords," Zel said, and spelled both names for Hal. 

Hal carefully wrote, "For Zelgadis Greywords" at the top of one of the letters and handed it to Zel. Then he turned to Amelia. 

"Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun," she chirped. 

"WHAT?" 

"Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun," she repeated. "A-m-e-l-i..." 

"You're a _princess_?" 

"Yes. Is that a problem?" 

Hal looked back and forth between the two. Zel looked amused. He had obviously known. Amelia looked confused. 

"No, it isn't a problem," Hal replied dazedly. "But I would have treated you much more respectfully if I'd had any idea, Princess Amelia. Why didn't you tell us?" 

"You didn't ask," Amelia replied simply. 

"You would have treated her differently if you'd known," Zelgadis said. "We enjoyed being ordinary members of the caravan. Right, Amelia?" 

"Right!" 

"Zel...Zelgadis-san, are you royalty too?" 

"Hardly." Zel snorted. "I'm just a freelance mercenary who happened to end up travelling with the same people as Amelia." 

"Can I tell the others?" 

Amelia looked at Zelgadis, but he just looked straight back at her without any indication of approval or disapproval. "I don't mind," she smiled. "I'm proud of my family and my city!" 

Hal was about to go proclaim the news when he realized that he still had Amelia's letter of recommendation in his hand. "Do you still want this?" 

"Yes! Whether one is a princess or a pauper, it's good to have an employer's praise!" 

Rather doubtfully, he wrote out, "For Amelia Wil Tesla Seyruun" and handed it to her. She hugged it to her chest. 

"Guys, you'll never believe this!" Hal called, running towards the campfire. 

* * *

Amelia looked around at the busy streets, her face shining with a happiness that was almost too great for the human heart to hold. "It's good to be home," she said simply. 

"Then why have you been trying so hard to avoid it?" Zelgadis asked with mild exasperation. The two had parted from the caravan at the city walls and were now nearing the palace. 

"Have I?" 

"Only at every opportunity." 

"Well," Amelia admitted with downcast eyes, "It's kind of boring. When I'm home, I spend all my time reading over new laws and planning parties. It's important work! It maintains the bonds of justice and friendship! But I enjoy traveling and helping people in person more. Besides, you never come visit me in Seyruun and I miss you." 

"Seyruun is not a good place for someone who looks like a monster." 

"But you're human now. Does that mean you'll come visit me more often?" 

"I'll think about it. My sister is going to be living in Seyruun too soon. That will give me twice as much reason to come here." 

They paused in the shadow of the palace gates. None of the guards had spotted them yet. 

"Where will you go now?" Amelia asked. 

"I don't know," the young man replied. "There's an entire world out there where people will no longer run screaming at the sight of my face. My father suggested that I should study more magic." 

Amelia looked down at her feet and blushed. "Would you like to stay here for a while? There's a lot more books in the library that we haven't looked at yet, and Daddy likes you almost as much as he likes Lina-san." 

Zelgadis watched the petite princess grind her toe into the dust. Then he looked up at the castle towers above them and around at the busy street. An expression crossed his face which had never been there during his years as a chimera, a warm, happy, carefree smile. "I guess I can stay a few days," he said. 

_The End_

* * *

**_Author's Note:_**Thank you for reading my story! I hope you enjoyed it. As always, I _love_ getting feedback so please feel free to tell me anything that made you laugh, sigh or scream in frustration. 

This story is now up in prettier form on my webpage. I won't give the address here because it is subject to change, but you can find it on my author page (Just click on my name in the header of this page). 

I double-checked this story for typos and weird punctuation but it is likely that errors still remain. If you find any serious ones or a lot of little ones, please let me know. I'd also like to know about any facts that are contrary to cannon, characters that you find out-of-character, or plot holes. Barring the discovery of such things, this story is now in its absolutely final form. That means I can move on to the next one! 

I do have some ideas for a sequel. It would probably have Lina, Gourry, Xellos and, of course, Zel and Amelia as the major characters, and it would involve political intrigue, disguises, and lots of new places and people. I have hopes that it might even have a climactic plot although I suspect it would be almost as episodic and short on action as this one. A certain amount of shameless romance is also a possibility. Unfortunately, it will probably take me at least a year to write it and I refuse to start posting it until I'm sure the early foreshadowing is pointing in the right direction. To keep you satisfied in the meantime, I have some shorter stories in the works. Keep an eye out for them. 

Once again, thank you for sticking with this story through all eighteen long chapters. Knowing that somebody is reading my stories is a great incentive to keep writing them. 


	19. Epilogue: Tying up Loose Ends

**_Author's Note:_** Because I love you all so much, and to apologize for taking so long to do the final revisions, I am giving you this brief epilogue. Besides, I just couldn't leave loose ends like that poor guy from chapter 6 unresolved! 

* * *

**Epilogue: Tying Up Loose Ends**

It really wasn't Mikas' fault. Sure, he might have avoided the collision if he had been paying more attention to his surroundings, but the girl was the one who had been running much too fast for such a crowded street. 

"Hey!" Mikas protested. "Watch where you're..." 

Then he realized with horror that the fall had knocked off his hat. He grabbed for it, but it was too late. People all up and down the street were stopping to stare at him. 

Hat in hand, he looked up at the girl who had knocked him over and his horror grew tenfold. Dainty, high-heeled shoes...frilly, pale gold dress embroidered with what looked like real gold...hands sparkling with rings...tiara... She was a _noblewoman_! 

"I-I'm sorry, miss. I'll go now. Please don't call the guards," he whimpered, his long, grey ears drooping pathetically. 

"Are you a chimera?" she asked. The tone of her voice made him look up again in surprise. Like her voice, her face contained no hint of fear or revulsion. She seemed simply curious. 

"Um, yes. No! Sort of. I used to be. I guess I still am," Mikas answered confusedly. 

"Used to be?" the girl repeated. 

"Um, it's a long story. I'll just go now, okay?" 

The girl swelled up with all the fury she had not shown at his odd appearance. "Tell me what happened to you!" she ordered. 

"Okay!" the quivering man agreed quickly, ears flattened back. "Well, uh, I was once completely human but then a sorcerer turned me into a chimera. A few months ago, I met a guy who turned me human again. But then my ears turned back like this. I came to Seyruun to find a way to stop myself from turning back into a chimera. Um, I think that's everything." 

"Who was the evil man who turned you into a chimera?" the girl demanded with blazing eyes. "Anyone who would rob an innocent man of his humanity deserves to be crushed by the full might of justice!" 

"Um, his name was Diol," Mikas admitted. 

The girl's rage shrank from mountainous to molehillish. "Oh, Diol. I already punished him." 

"Um, Could you give me directions to the Sorcerer's Guild or a white magic temple?" the rabbit-eared young man ventured. 

"That isn't necessary," the girl said. "I think I can fix it." 

She looked Mikas over carefully through eyes narrowed in concentration. Apparently satisfied, she nodded to herself. "It's only the ears that are a problem. The rest of you is human down to the deepest essence," she announced. 

She began waving her arms and chanting. Frozen with terror, Mikas stared, mesmerized, at her sparkling hands. One of her rings was set with a heart-shaped ruby surrounded by tiny diamonds. Another was a plain gold band. A third looked like it had been braided from three different coloured metals. A fourth had been carved from some blue-green stone. Many more caught the sunlight as her hands wove in complicated patterns, but his frozen mind refused to take them in. 

A strange sensation not quite like tickling and not quite like pain crept over Mikas' ears. It started deep inside his ear canals and swept outward down the length of his ears. He went completely deaf for several seconds and when his hearing returned it was oddly muted. He put a hand to his unresponsive ear. Instead of the familiar furry softness, he felt the rigid curve of a _human_ ear. He quickly put his other hand to his other ear. It was human too! 

"Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" he shouted as the girl finished her chant. 

She grinned. "You're welcome. It's always a pleasure to set things right." 

"Will they stay human this time?" he asked, already knowing the answer. 

"Yes," she said. "You are completely you in every part now. Just stay away from chimera makers." She helped him to his feet. "I really have to get back to United World meeting. I'm already late. Will you be okay?" 

"Never better!" Mikas declared. 

The beautifully dressed young woman started running up the street again. 

* * *

When Devon looked out of his temple that morning, he saw a girl standing in front of the statue of Rezo. He leaned his elbows on the windowsill and watched her curiously. She was in her mid teens, if he was any judge. Her hair was an unusual dark, purplish-red and pulled back in a thick braid. Her outfit suggested that she was a novice in one of the city's larger temples. She was talking to the statue. From this distance, Devon couldn't make out what she was saying, but her soft, rich voice sounded sad. 

At length, she bent down and placed a bouquet of flowers at the foot of the statue, and started to walk away. 

"Is there a story behind those flowers?" Devon asked loudly. 

The girl turned to look at him. "Pardon?" 

Devon opened and shut his mouth a few times, his mind completely blank. The bronze face of the statue and the living face of the girl were identical. With one looming above the other, the resemblance was unmistakable. Even the way escaped wisps of hair flew out from the sides of the girl's face echoed the hairstyle of the statue. No, there was one vital difference between the two faces, Devon realized as the girl stared at him quizzically. Her eyes were open. 

"Did you say something?" the girl asked again. 

Devon pulled his wits together. "I was just asking why you're leaving flowers at the foot of the Red Priest." 

The girl smiled shyly. "I do this every year on the anniversary of his death." 

"That's today?" The girl nodded. "How long have you been doing it?" 

"This is the first time, actually," the girl admitted. "He's been dead for three years but I only found out about it a few months ago." 

"He's dead? He died only three years ago?" Devon was not sure whether he was more surprised by his patron sage's mortality or his longevity. 

"Yes." The girl looked down at her feet with a combination of sorrow and shyness. 

"What's your connection to him?" The resemblance was too strong to be a coincidence. 

"I'm his great-granddaughter." 

"Really? I didn't know he even had children." 

"Not many people do." She smiled at him with that same combination of sorrow and shyness. "Um, I have to go now. I'm meeting my brother Zel for lunch." 

He didn't think anything of the fact that she headed in the direction of the palace. 

* * *

Alceste found the young man sitting at the other end of the library table rather disturbing. He wasn't sure exactly why. The young man wasn't doing anything extraordinary. He was simply copying a passage from an old tome into a notebook. 

Perhaps it was something about the young man's concentration. He was focused on his task with an intensity that shouted of impatience kept in check by careful attention to accuracy. He was much too disciplined for a student working on an assignment or a junior mage doing research for a senior mage. Alceste was certain that whatever the young man was doing, he was doing entirely by his own desire. 

There was something fierce about this young man, and fierce men were rare in the Atlas City Sorcerer's Guild. The Guild was full of clever, scheming men and intelligent, impractical men, but this young man looked like neither. There was something terribly straightforward and practical about him. He made Alceste think of swords. 

Alceste shook off his fancies. He was letting his imagination run away with him again. His instincts about people were usually surprisingly accurate - a talent that had helped him to survive long enough to become the heir-apparent of the current guildmaster - but it was foolish to read so much into a simple frown of concentration. Despite the late Guildmaster Halcyform's extensive testing, Alceste had never shown any talent for telepathy. 

His attention crept back to the young man at the far end of the table. What was it that made the youth seem so out of place? He was dressed appropriately in a grey-blue sorcerer's robe of a simple but traditional cut, perfectly proper clothing for a guild member. However, he had left the robe unfastened. Under the guise of getting another book from the shelf, Alceste surreptitiously found an angle from which he could see the rest of the young man's outfit. The open robe revealed a purple shirt, beige pants, a sword belt without a sword, and well-worn boots. 

That solved the mystery. The man was a mercenary looking up information for his next job. He must be several steps above the average mercenary sorcerer both in power and in training if he had managed to pass the Sorcerer's Guild's demanding tests. And a swordsman as well. Interesting. 

"What are you looking up?" Alceste asked casually, reseating himself at the table. 

"Atalan," the young man replied without looking up. 

"The lost island? The one that sank into the sea a thousand years ago, taking the secrets of the Ancients with it?" Perhaps Alceste had misjudged the boy if he was the type to chase foolish legends. 

"It didn't sink," the youth replied coolly. "The Mazoku Barrier formed right on top of it. All the inhabitants must have died instantly but the buildings were preserved in perfect condition until the Barrier came down two years ago. I doubt it holds all the 'Lost Secrets of the Ancients', but it _is_ a nearly intact Mazoku War era city. It should hold at least a few ancient secrets of value." 

"How do you know all this about it?" 

"I came across it when I was searching for...something different. It did not hold what I was looking for so I did not stay long. Now that I...have found what I was looking for, I plan to go back and take a better look." 

"Do you think someone else may have plundered it by now?" Alceste asked in a tone of friendly concern. 

The young man smiled grimly. "I doubt it. I walked for three days across burning desert and flew over the sea for another half day in order to reach it. That's counting from the morning I left the northernmost town south of the Barrier." 

It took Alceste awhile to find a response to that. "If you already know where it is, what do you need from the book?" he said at last. 

"This is the account of a man who visited the city when it was still alive," the adventurer explained. "It gives directions to the most important buildings. I would hate to spend a week digging in what I thought was the head temple only to discover that it was a bank containing only obsolete financial documents." 

"And money." 

"I'm more interested in magic than money. I find that coins are rarely valuable enough to be worth carrying over long distances." He put down his pen and whispered a spell over the page to dry the ink. 

"The wandering life sounds fascinating," Alceste replied politely. 

"Mm." The young man stared at the older one measuringly for a long moment before turning to go. 

"Let me know what you find," Alceste called after him jovially. 

The mercenary just waved good bye without looking back. 


End file.
